What is the “perfect” game? Everyone one of us has their own singular opinions and experiences with RTS gaming, but here is mine. I will go through pretty much every single RTS I have played and give a run-down on what’s good, what’s bad and then I will outline the important points that are needed for my RTS and then outline them more and in greater detail.
Let’s start off with Ensemble Studios’ Age of Empires II. Well, it had many different factions, bad graphics (by today’s standards) and a soft counter system. The way it divided up factions was very interesting, having the same unit database for all factions but only allowing certain factions a certain set of those units, buildings and techs. Then of course each faction had it’s own unique unit. The innovative thing about this system is that it allowed for many different factions to be created and many different combinations made without changing balance drastically, though making gameplay a little dry. The game had four different kinds of resources, food, gold, stone and wood. Food and gold were the primary resources used to build units, though wood was also used occasionally with siege weapons and archers, while gold, stone and wood were used for buildings. The way you built was through your villagers, though one problem with the game’s system was that you could only build a building with one villager, it would require many other villagers to make the building build at a normal speed. Villagers were also used in the acquisition of resources. The population limit had a “limit” but you would have to build houses to make room for more units, though as stated before there was a limit as to how many houses you could build. All in all, Age of Empires II a nice RTS, but without many defining or remarkable features. I would go on to explain other Age games but they are, unfortunately, clones of their predecessors with slight changes to gameplay.
Electronic Arts’ Battle for Middle Earth was a nice game, however it did have quite a few artificial constraints that ruined the highly potential gameplay. Don’t get me wrong – the game was fun, but just didn’t have that replayability that Zero Hour had. Setting it apart from many different games, the Battle for Middle Earth used no peons whatsoever. Instead, it used a more automated system. Build plots came into play, along with time-based resources, where your resource buildings were not drop points for peons, but merely produced X resources every six seconds, the exception being evil’s Lumber Mills. This system worked very, very well in terms of map control and fighting over resource spots, but it restricted strategy and the play of the game. Each team started out with yet another undesirable trait, a population limit. On the assumption that you have played the game, I won’t go into much detail about it, just choose the features I believe should remain in today’s and the future’s RTS’s. I really liked the resource plot system in the game as it allowed for a lot of battles for the map and making map control really important, as it should be. This feature also appears in Company of Heroes, but in better detail and depth that I would rather use it’s system in my RTS than Battle for Middle Earth’s. Otherwise, this game was slightly restrictive in it’s use of build plots, battalions and population limits. It’s counter system was easy, simple and effective, so much that it is undesirable compared to today’s more advanced games.
Battle for Middle Earth’s successor, the Battle for Middle Earth 2, was Battle for Middle Earth on steroids. You could build everywhere, there were many more units, battalions were bigger, and neutral buildings were all thrown into the mix. It had the use of more peons, the Builder, to, well, build stuff. It also used some plots, however only for your fortress and walls. This game was better than its predecessor; however, it lacked the true meaning of map control. The only real advantage to having map control was that your population limit increased with every resource building you built, because with every resource building after a certain amount every resource building produced less. In this case, someone could turtle off of about four resource buildings and win while the other person had many, many more. In fact, the turtler had the advantage. While this game was definitely better than Battle for Middle Earth, no traits were unique nor could they really be mixed in with other games’ features.
Command and Conquer Generals and Zero Hour were definitely good, putting together the Age series’ peon resource system and making it more simple, simply making one resource, money. Though balance was a little off, these games were definitely fast paced and fun to the end. They didn’t use battalions, and this opted for better micro-management of troops in a nice way. The resource system was also very nice, making map control good but not a necessity.
Finally, we come to Company of Heroes. A very, very nice RTS; a good job done by Relic. It had, physics, balance, map control, micro, everything! The only real problem with it is that there was only one match up, which would, of course, make for repetitive gameplay. The resource system was one of the best things about it. You would have units capture neutral resource building, which would then give you a territory area and then those spots would ship resources back to your command center. However, if these bits of territory did not connect to your command center, the ones cut off would ship none at all, so strategic control of the map was required. Next is the micro. Units would be in a battalion, but what I would like to call a “loose” battalion, not like in the Battle for Middle Earth series where units were fairly constricted in a formation. Units are able to form up behind cover, which is just about anything, ranging from gravestones to barrels. Of course, this cover can be blown up, but while it is there it provides units with significant advantages. Units, if under fire, will take cover normally and return fire but probably won’t make it out of the situation alive without your micro. Battalions that have lost men can have those men bought when they are standing next to you command center. The only real problem, aside from one match up is that you can only build buildings nearby to your command center, an area that is surrounded by bunkers and such defenses. The only except to this is forward barracks’s can be built at certain locations. Now that we have all the core elements from the games, let’s move on to “designing” CNC3.
Resource collecting and storing is a big issue in games; it is a core concept of RTS. Closely tied in with it is map control. The issue behind map control is that it should reward players for being offensive and holding the map, but nor should it be so overwhelming that if your opponent takes the map you can’t come back. I really liked Company of Heroes design where is was simple, sweet and map control was rewarding. I really would have this put into CNC3, though the only thing I didn’t like about it was only being able to build stuff in your territory/near your Headquarters.
So, now that we have our resource/map control system let’s move onto another core concept of the game, how to build your base. Battle for Middle Earth’s was very restrictive, as was Company of Heroes’ so we don’t want those. I think Zero Hour’s style is the best, with buildings being able to be attacked while built, and the builder too (unlike Battle for Middle Earth 2’s). It is also very unrestrictive and you can build any where, so there are lots of options available to you.
So, how many factions should there be? I believe that three is sufficient for a base game, perhaps more in an expansion. The three sides are few enough to retain balance without taking the release a very long time. But it is enough for good replayability, as long as each faction is unique, which is easy enough with only three. The problem with Battle for Middle Earth 2’s six factions is that they only differed slightly in design.
The combat and countering system should be fairly simple, like Company of Heroes, with different armors sets and cover, etc. This allows for good and efficient microing of troops (microing troops makes a difference in the game) and it’s realistic, like running circles around a tank with infantry while waiting for your sticky bombs to recharge.
Something that I think would make gameplay a lot more fun and interesting, also adding in more replayability in the game would be to take something from a Turn-Based Strategy games, Civilization 4. The concept behind it is that units would rank up like normal but when they gain a new level you would get to choose a special ability (not in Civilization 4’s case though) or (in Civilization 4’s case) you would choose something they would be better at, like fighting on hills. I believe this would be really nice because it makes you not want to have to lose ranked up soldiers, and every single time you play the game you have a very different set of options that are crucial on the tactical scale.
Well, that’s the basic core concept of how I would design CNC3, minus little details of what kinds of units and all, just mainly the core concept of it. Now, while many of my points differ a lot from the current design of the game, that doesn’t mean I hate it, whatsoever. I really like how EA’s designing it and while I may have a few gripes, CNC3 will live up to my expectations most definitely.
This post has been edited by Ithildur: Jan 29 2007, 17:52 PM
Good article Ithildur, but if you allow me a word of advice, I think you should develop a bit more on how all the good elements you presented in the first (and largest) part of the text should be blended in the CnC3 fiction and gameplay. It really gets a bit on the lousy-ends side in the closing paragraphs, as if rushed out, and the conclusion of an article is never a place you want to convey that feeling for the reader. Just my $0.02
What is the “perfect” game? Everyone one of us has their own singular opinions and experiences with RTS gaming, but here is mine. I will go through pretty much every single RTS I have played and give a run-down on what’s good, what’s bad and then I will outline the important points that are needed for my RTS and then outline them more and in greater detail.
Let’s start off with Ensemble Studios’ Age of Empires II. Well, it had many different factions, bad graphics (by today’s standards) and a soft counter system. The way it divided up factions was very interesting, having the same unit database for all factions but only allowing certain factions a certain set of those units, buildings and techs. Then of course each faction had it’s own unique unit. The innovative thing about this system is that it allowed for many different factions to be created and many different combinations made without changing balance drastically, though making gameplay a little dry. The game had four different kinds of resources, food, gold, stone and wood. Food and gold were the primary resources used to build units, though wood was also used occasionally with siege weapons and archers, while gold, stone and wood were used for buildings. The way you built was through your villagers, though one problem with the game’s system was that you could only build a building with one villager, it would require many other villagers to make the building build at a normal speed. Villagers were also used in the acquisition of resources. The population limit had a “limit” but you would have to build houses to make room for more units, though as stated before there was a limit as to how many houses you could build. All in all, Age of Empires II a nice RTS, but without many defining or remarkable features. I would go on to explain other Age games but they are, unfortunately, clones of their predecessors with slight changes to gameplay.
Electronic Arts’ Battle for Middle Earth was a nice game, however it did have quite a few artificial constraints that ruined the highly potential gameplay. Don’t get me wrong – the game was fun, but just didn’t have that replayability that Zero Hour had. Setting it apart from many different games, the Battle for Middle Earth used no peons whatsoever. Instead, it used a more automated system. Build plots came into play, along with time-based resources, where your resource buildings were not drop points for peons, but merely produced X resources every six seconds, the exception being evil’s Lumber Mills. This system worked very, very well in terms of map control and fighting over resource spots, but it restricted strategy and the play of the game. Each team started out with yet another undesirable trait, a population limit. On the assumption that you have played the game, I won’t go into much detail about it, just choose the features I believe should remain in today’s and the future’s RTS’s. I really liked the resource plot system in the game as it allowed for a lot of battles for the map and making map control really important, as it should be. This feature also appears in Company of Heroes, but in better detail and depth that I would rather use it’s system in my RTS than Battle for Middle Earth’s. Otherwise, this game was slightly restrictive in it’s use of build plots, battalions and population limits. It’s counter system was easy, simple and effective, so much that it is undesirable compared to today’s more advanced games.
Battle for Middle Earth’s successor, the Battle for Middle Earth 2, was Battle for Middle Earth on steroids. You could build everywhere, there were many more units, battalions were bigger, and neutral buildings were all thrown into the mix. It had the use of more peons, the Builder, to, well, build stuff. It also used some plots, however only for your fortress and walls. This game was better than its predecessor; however, it lacked the true meaning of map control. The only real advantage to having map control was that your population limit increased with every resource building you built, because with every resource building after a certain amount every resource building produced less. In this case, someone could turtle off of about four resource buildings and win while the other person had many, many more. In fact, the turtler had the advantage. While this game was definitely better than Battle for Middle Earth, no traits were unique nor could they really be mixed in with other games’ features.
Command and Conquer Generals and Zero Hour were definitely good, putting together the Age series’ peon resource system and making it more simple, simply making one resource, money. Though balance was a little off, these games were definitely fast paced and fun to the end. They didn’t use battalions, and this opted for better micro-management of troops in a nice way. The resource system was also very nice, making map control good but not a necessity.
Finally, we come to Company of Heroes. A very, very nice RTS; a good job done by Relic. It had, physics, balance, map control, micro, everything! The only real problem with it is that there was only one match up, which would, of course, make for repetitive gameplay. The resource system was one of the best things about it. You would have units capture neutral resource building, which would then give you a territory area and then those spots would ship resources back to your command center. However, if these bits of territory did not connect to your command center, the ones cut off would ship none at all, so strategic control of the map was required. Next is the micro. Units would be in a battalion, but what I would like to call a “loose” battalion, not like in the Battle for Middle Earth series where units were fairly constricted in a formation. Units are able to form up behind cover, which is just about anything, ranging from gravestones to barrels. Of course, this cover can be blown up, but while it is there it provides units with significant advantages. Units, if under fire, will take cover normally and return fire but probably won’t make it out of the situation alive without your micro. Battalions that have lost men can have those men bought when they are standing next to you command center. The only real problem, aside from one match up is that you can only build buildings nearby to your command center, an area that is surrounded by bunkers and such defenses. The only except to this is forward barracks’s can be built at certain locations. Now that we have all the core elements from the games, let’s move on to “designing” CNC3.
Resource collecting and storing is a big issue in games; it is a core concept of RTS. Closely tied in with it is map control. The issue behind map control is that it should reward players for being offensive and holding the map, but nor should it be so overwhelming that if your opponent takes the map you can’t come back. I really liked Company of Heroes design where is was simple, sweet and map control was rewarding. I really would have this put into CNC3, though the only thing I didn’t like about it was only being able to build stuff in your territory/near your Headquarters.
So, now that we have our resource/map control system let’s move onto another core concept of the game, how to build your base. Battle for Middle Earth’s was very restrictive, as was Company of Heroes’ so we don’t want those. I think Zero Hour’s style is the best, with buildings being able to be attacked while built, and the builder too (unlike Battle for Middle Earth 2’s). It is also very unrestrictive and you can build any where, so there are lots of options available to you.
So, how many factions should there be? I believe that three is sufficient for a base game, perhaps more in an expansion. The three sides are few enough to retain balance without taking the release a very long time. But it is enough for good replayability, as long as each faction is unique, which is easy enough with only three. The problem with Battle for Middle Earth 2’s six factions is that they only differed slightly in design.
The combat and countering system should be fairly simple, like Company of Heroes, with different armors sets and cover, etc. This allows for good and efficient microing of troops (microing troops makes a difference in the game) and it’s realistic, like running circles around a tank with infantry while waiting for your sticky bombs to recharge.
Something that I think would make gameplay a lot more fun and interesting, also adding in more replayability in the game would be to take something from a Turn-Based Strategy games, Civilization 4. The concept behind it is that units would rank up like normal but when they gain a new level you would get to choose a special ability (not in Civilization 4’s case though) or (in Civilization 4’s case) you would choose something they would be better at, like fighting on hills. I believe this would be really nice because it makes you not want to have to lose ranked up soldiers, and every single time you play the game you have a very different set of options that are crucial on the tactical scale.
Well, that’s the basic core concept of how I would design CNC3, minus little details of what kinds of units and all, just mainly the core concept of it. Now, while many of my points differ a lot from the current design of the game, that doesn’t mean I hate it, whatsoever. I really like how EA’s designing it and while I may have a few gripes, CNC3 will live up to my expectations most definitely.
This post has been edited by Ithildur: Jan 29 2007, 17:52 PM
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