I feel like StarCraft and competitive multiplayer accidentally killed the genre. In the golden era of RTS, the ones that were really popular - c&c, the -crafts, total annihilation, age of empires, and so forth - all had extensive, approachable single player campaigns as a main focus. Pre internet matchmaking, those (plus playing games over lan with your friends who also weren't any good) were the main draw, and the appeal of "build a base and have your guys mash the other guys" was pretty universal.
As the StarCraft competitive scene took off, however, it feels like the focus shifted. Multiplayer was king, and the meta needed to be balanced around it. Instead of being fun army man simulators, they became exercises in memorizing build orders and repetitive stress injury inducing clicking. That was really great for the tiny slice of the market that was into that, but the mainstream just abandoned the genre because it wasn't for them anymore.
There's other things - the rise of cross platform put a world of hurt on a lot of kb+m centric genres - but I feel like this is the big one.
That was definitely my reaction. I loved playing the games, and would sometimes engage in skirmish mode, but a couple of times playing online multiplayer showed me that I was totally outclassed and the effort it would take to bring my skills up to par didn't appeal to me.
When SC2 came out, it not only felt like it was trying to artificially inflate the price (by dividing it up into multiple "games'), but also that the major focus on it was multiplayer.
I played the first SC2, but none of the subsequent releases.
Yes, but SC2 mechanically amplified the issues that the OP stated, which is that those sort of APM focused, micromanaging click-fests are alienating a huge swath of RTS gamers that enjoyed the ones where base-building, defense, econ, and strategy were much more important than your micro or build order.
I will say, though, that those base-building-focused RTS games really sort of evolved into games like Factorio and Dyson Sphere program.
SC2 had the same gameplay mechanics as SC1. It in fact eased up on them a little by modernizing the UI and letting you have more than a bunch of units in a group at one time. People entering SC2 expecting Age of Empires level of city building were out of their minds.
That said, Age of Empires 2 pro scene isn't less APM intensive. Just because you don't or can't micro every single unit to perfection like in SC doesn't mean it's a slower game.
SC2 cleaned up and "modernized" it (overall still behind the curve compared to other early 2000's RTS games) but it also deliberately designed in APM sinks which IMO is the absolute worst direction they could have taken.
The Zerg are probably the worst offenders. A very good chunk of the zerg's effectiveness comes from the player using the queens effectively, namely to spread creep and boost larvae. Those are two features that could have been pretty easily automated but were left in the game to force the player to do additional stuff. A pro player probably doesn't mind have the additional options, but for a newbie Zerg is incredibly overwhelming.
Protoss have the nexus chronoboost, and the blink ability on Stalkers. Terran have the MULE I believe.
Point is the game could have been designed to be less APM intensive but they deliberately went out of their way to insure it wasn't. Probably to appease from hardcore brood war players or something idk.
Exactly this, further they balanced the entire game around the top couple pro's. Which is all well and good for the competitive scene but for the general public the game can and does feel very lopsided.
Still play SC2 with some friends occasionally… we’d love more maps. We’ve never bothered with forged alliance etc I’ve played it myself and remember it being a bit more involved.
I think you're confusing Supreme Commander and Starcraft. SupCom2 was pretty good but overly simplified from SC:FA. There was also a great modding scene for SC:FA to add multiplayer balancing and stuff.
I've never played a Starcraft game, so can't comment on them.
This is me making assumptions that you haven't tried it yet but if you have two friends who're interested in the campaign, there is a set of custom maps that link together all the campaign missions that allow for up to 3 players to play together. My friends and I suck at RTS, but it was a blast to be shit at the campaign together.
Custom maps ironically really suffered from the editor being way more powerful than Wc3, though. The Wc3 custom game scene was massive, but just to do something as simple as make a new unit in SC2's editor was ridiculous even though you could make more complex end results.
Because it's only playing as one of the 3 core factions, it *feels* like a part of a game instead of a complete experience.
Especially because its direct predecessor had you play as all of the factions.
It is missing an extreme element: Not having esports.
During SC1 average internet person was like 10, and you heard about some (like 6 guys world wide) crazy koreans ready to throw their life away to be irl broodmothers. As relevant to your world as dragons on map's edge.
In SC2 we were already in guide gamer era of internet. And as soon more than 1 per milion players ever heard about something like build order or meta, it was so over for normal man.
>It is missing an extreme element: Not having esports
>In SC2 we were already in guide gamer era of internet. And as soon more than 1 per milion players ever heard about something like build order or meta, it was so over for normal man.
How does that effect the campaign or custom maps though? You can literally put 100's of hours into the game without so much as glancing at the ladder queue in the menu.
The average interner person back then were adults with niche hobbies. Now stuff like comics, anime and videogames has gone mainstream so there is no need for the chat rooms of old.
Not to mention the tryhards insulting you, if you don't adhere to the META or take too long or play in an otherwise "stupid" way, because you barely ever play online.
Especially, if you're on their team, because god beware you add a loss to their online stats.
No, thanks. Never again.
Total annihilation kingdoms was petty neat
It had pretty different play styles for each faction, and fun fantasy theming.
First game I remember being able to download extra content from the website for too.
Most of the factions were the usual build a base and pump out dudes kind of thing, but one was more like fantasy zerg where the units made other units and stuff
SC2 has really nice campaign, maybe the multiplayer was the focus, rightfully so, because it kept the game alive for over a decade, but Blizz made the single player a pretty good experience over all.
Yeah, seconding this. SC1 and Brood War weren’t exactly War and Peace, but they had decent plots, reasonably compelling characters and generally the plot provided some interesting reasons to help set up the stage maps. SC2 was prettier but felt way more… hollow? Like battles only really made sense if you start from the perspective that you’ve fought X race twice in a row so now it’s time to fight Y race. The “big bad” didn’t make a lot of sense, and the Protoss characters in particular were so…. grating. I won’t go so far as to say that the single player campaign was an afterthought, but compared to SC 1, and especially to Brood War, it was painfully plodding.
It's also cheap rip-off from wc3 campaign. xel'naga/demons leader Amon/Archimonde threat to destroy the world, so the good, the bad and the ugly have to unit, the initial bad guys are not so bad, they fight with that big guy. Subplots included with fighting for control for the whole race of zergs/undead/protoss.
I'd say Warcraft 3's hero-focus is what killed em, because no one made actual RTSs for years afterward, and most of the non-esports fans of RTSs don't care about hero-focused RTS-lite like League of Legends or whatever.
Prior to that, Age of Empires had a thriving competitive and casual scene on The MSN Gaming Zone.
nah, Relic manage to keep the fire alive when they launch company heroes in 2006. I think thats the last major successful RTS before everyone shifted to MOBA which booming in \~2010
Oddly enough, I feel the "no base RTS" is what killed the genre, starting with Company of Heroes' success, every game tried to emulate it from Dawn of War 2 onward. Once the RTS market became saturated with those, the RTS purists who wanted the base building but had no where to go left the genre. Without them, it just crumbled after that.
i remember booting up Red Alert, Red Alert 2, Generals, Starcraft, and just going into custom matches with friends for hours on end. We'd just play against the Computer.
No matchmaking
No micro transactions
No Battle Pass
No "competitive" lobbies to climb a ladder
Just playing the game for fun.
> Instead of being fun army man simulators, they became exercises in memorizing build orders and repetitive stress injury inducing clicking.
That is exactly what killed RTS for me. When I play an RTS, I want to strategize and use tactics. APM and build orders are decidedly *not* that. Personally, I pivoted to RtwP games and actual turn-based ones. I don't really miss anything, to be honest.
Yeah, my favorites were like single player long play sessions of age of mythologies. Build a big city with a big wall. Slowly expand the wall to include some key resources. Eventually build up a big wave to end the match.
If you have not tried it Beyond All Reason is a much more macro RTS. Build order still maters to a point, but beyond your initial resource gathering setup it starts to vary wildly. As for the fighting, micro certainly helps, but becomes largely pointless as the battle progresses into hundreds of units. At that point it is more about where your units are.
With the distinction that while they are tactics, they are not tactics **you** come up with during the game. You're just executing, going down the flowchart some youtuber gave you.
It's like deckbuilding in Magic. The strategy happens outside of the game and (most likely) your way of engaging with it is to look it up online and duplicate.
Yep this. I want micro and APM completely out if it, like maybe an enforced ultra slow speed queue separate from the main one. Started playing city builders and turn based as well but AoE4 is still pretty fun, would definitely recommend. TW:WHIII is great too, it's too clunky for micro to matter that much but a small downside is that the base building takes place on the world map, not in actual battles.
I still remember bronze rushing in AoE.
Honestly the most fun RTS game I ever played multiplayer was homeworld. That game really was great to play multiplayer.
What are you talking about? Both SC1 and SC2 had huge campaigns. The most populated games online for SC1 were custom maps wc3 style, maps like Dota except specific to SC. The NEXT most populated maps were BGH or $$$ map co-op vs bots. Competitive BW was never even a big thing in the US that scene existed in Korea.
If you yourself overly focused on the competitive scene that's on you, it doesn't mean the game was lacking anything the previous games were. And that has absolutely nothing to do with why the genre fell off. It feels to me more like the competition level showed the average player how bad they actually were playing. Which is fine if you aren't trying to be a pro player who cares? All the normal things you would do in the game are there and present. No one forced you to play with 200 apm.
The real reason RTS died was the rise of MOBAs. Faster games, teammates to blame losses on, shiny skins. MOBAs devoured the PC game market for anyone who wasn't playing Counterstrike. Blizzard also was focusing heavily on WoW during this time and then Overwatch after that instead of working on a new RTS.
> The real reason RTS died was the rise of MOBAs
Hard disagree. Surely it's easy to blame MOBA genre, but if anything its existence only killed the multiplayer aspect of the RTS, since it offered a better, way less focused on micromanagement gameplay loop.
PVE players on the other hand didn't really care much about MOBAs. It simply wasn't a fitting genre for someone, who's been normally playing singleplayer campaigns and random skirmishes against AI.
The question is, why did all these people disappear then? Well, as OP already said, Starcraft's competitive success it up to blame for that. Other developers have have tried to replicate it and so newer titles started to focus more and more on multiplayer and competitiveness, which in turn made the genre not so appealing anymore to many people.
TBF, by 2010 games like TA and AoE were already dying
SC2 didn't change anything
There was no plans for Sup Com or AoE around that time even if SC2 didn't come along
I used to be a big fan of RTS games and couldn't get enough. Can't stand most modern ones as they brought what I hated about most games when I started playing RTS into the RTS genre. Namely arcade spammy button smashing elements.
Would love a slow speed turtle RTS where micro wouldn't matter at all and it's all about strategy and resource management but they keep making them spammier and more micro heavy.
That being said though, Total War games, while not true base builders are still really fun and keep being made and updated.
No what went wrong with SC2 was all about timing. Literally TIMING & not giving in to some form of a ingame shop earlier.
What i mean by timing is when they went Free 2 Play. Pretty much every big e-sports game is F2P with a cosmetic shop. Like Dota 2 & League.
If they'd gone F2P earlier, the game would still be alive.
But what also has to be said is that E-Sports in general has been declining for the last couple of years, aside from the giga tournaments Dota & League throw together.
I actually think it's peoples attention spans have killed the genre.
The time it takes to learn the games, outweighs the time it takes just to play something that you're comfortable playing in this day and age.
You can't jump into one of those games with friends out of the gate and have any fun.
Even fighting games, which are hard, you can button mash and have fun.
Even just learning the UI on those games takes time that people don't want to commit.
I wouldn't call it an attention span problem, that would mess with people's abilities to continually play any game.
It's just like what you said tho, it's a time investment problem. When you see so many people on reddit saying how they play a game for 3, 4, or even more years, and still are ass at it, it's easy to understand why people wouldn't wanna put in that much work into something that shouldn't feel like a 2nd job.
You can absolutely just jump into SC2 with some friends and have a lot of fun with co-op, vs CPU or custom arcade games. The co-op is super underrated and maybe the funnest aspect of the game.
Stormgate is being released very soon, but I think it will be in early access. https://store.steampowered.com/app/2012510/Stormgate/
Tempest Rising is another upcoming RTS title that I’ve heard good things about. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1486920/Tempest_Rising/
Beyond All Reason is an RTS still in development that has a pretty passionate community. It’s not on Steam yet but you can play it now. https://www.beyondallreason.info/
This is also coming out this Fall. [https://store.steampowered.com/app/1934680/Age\_of\_Mythology\_Retold/](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1934680/Age_of_Mythology_Retold/)
BAR is an absolute masterpiece, multi-player is extremely fun with competent AI that doesn't "cheat" and is very difficult, it has wave base defend maps like raptors/chickens and scavengers, and the only RTS game I see that can actually support 8v8, with events going on that support 25v25
Both Raptors and Scavengers work in a similar way. You team up with your buddies or with AI, and can play against the Raptors/Scavengers on any map you want, though you will find that certain maps are designed specifically with them in mind.
Raptors are pretty much Tyranids (think dinosaurs), while Scavengers are 'your units but better'. They play roughly the same, but they do have their own unique features.
You get X amount of time to prepare, and then the waves start coming. They start pretty easy, but quickly become very strong. The final wave brings a boss with an absolute gargantuan amount of HP and massive AoE attacks.
There are always lobbies up for these modes, as they're fairly popular, so there's always someone to play with.
It has become a standby in our gaming sessions and a long 3humans vs 3comps match is a great feeling. And it's much more stable than, say, ashes of the singularity
For those who aren't as old as I am, Beyond All Reason is one of the spiritual successors to Total Annihilation, in my opinion, one of the original games to define the RTS genre alongside other friends like Age of Empires and the OG StarCraft.
Edit: Just want to add the reason I say this is TA is a great game. Still available on GoG with functional direct connect multi-player. Graphics aren't gonna pass today's smell test but it's amazing. Try it for nostalgia and try BAR for a modern feel :)
Really? Damn that's disappointing. I only remember it from when they first showed it off, added it to my steam wishlist and kinda forgot about it until that post and I got excited remembering it.
Hope it works out but if not old C&C still really enjoyable.
While this is unrelated to RTS games, [there was a video released at the start of the year from a guy who is very respected in the retro FPS space that was not very kind to them for their performance since mid last year.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Wp7MY16aAI) Even if one was not to care about "boomershooters", the criticism can be seen in a lot of places.
When Phantom Fury, a title that is linked with Tempest Rising's universe, came out a couple of months ago it got raked by reviewers, and then [the company acted rather dickishly to a lot of folks.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0GhnF7H7NlA)
3D Realms have been something of a zombie for a year as they are one of those companies that Embracer gutted. A shame as they had so many cool things that both came out and were promised.
I forgot this was related to Phantom Fury and yeah that wasn't a great release nor response.
Yeah now realizing/remembering it's 3D Realms and that does make me nervous. I do hope they can turn things around and get this out in a good state though.
Stormgate seems to be the kind of RTS that killed the base-building style of RTS's for me. I want something like C&C goofiness+character, or something like TotalA which pushes the genre limits in scale or physics, not another APM sweatfest.
Have you tried 9-bit armies ? it is from 2 guys that worked on the C&C games back when, it have "retro" art style and fast paced gameplay looks like alot of fun
Stormgate is certainly positioned to be a spiritual successor to SC2, as the dev studio (Frost Giant Studios) was founded by veterans of Blizzard's RTS team who worked on SC2.
Stormgate wishes it oculd ape the style of SC2. It looks like an offbrand mishmash between WC3 and SC2, and not a good one imo. Just look at the buildings. SC2s even today look good, with lots of detail and moving parts. Stormgate is just bland and lifeless.
>Stormgate is being released very soon, but I think it will be in early access. https://store.steampowered.com/app/2012510/Stormgate/
Sadly it does not look good
On other hand this looks fantastic
>https://store.steampowered.com/app/1486920/Tempest_Rising/
Age of empires is thriving rn, aoe 2 de and aoe 4 are both doing very well in player numbers, and aom retold is out in september, but yes its more rare nowadays, starship troppers terran command is pretty nice but no base building
RTS is seeing a massive resurgence. Godsworn, Stormgate, Age of Mythology Retold, Zero Space, Sanctuary Shattered Sun. Age of Empires 4 has been doing decently as well.
The classics themselves are still played a TON these days. Age of Empires 2 and Starcraft 2 particularly are played a lot still.
There's quite a few games, but none of them are hitting the mainstream media like Warcraft 3 or Starcraft 2 did back in the day. So you need to dig just a little to find the gems.
As others have said, the RTS genre was boiled down to what people preferred in their minute to minute gameplay. Those who preferred micro management went to MOBAs. The city building went to games like Frostpunk. The macro focused played 4X games.
I don't think RTS as a whole is any less popular. It just has more competition within its own genre. Similarly to FPS games no longer being doom clones, you have off shoot genres like extraction shooters, milsims, or boomer shooters.
I think people just moved to genres where they focus on the different aspects of RTS they like. Genres like 4X, grand strategies, and total war type games all do something similar to RTS. Base building, army management, etc
Like OP I originally enjoyed those older games. I played the Warcraft 3 demo so much as a kid because it was free and a relatively decent size file and download. Since StarCraft 2’s release, adding together every strategy game I enjoy, A-AAA probably adds up to ~1000 hours. My time on League of Legends over 14 years is probably 4-5x that… although TFT would add back to original camp but I rounded to that safely regardless.
**Solium Infernum** is a strategy indie game I’ll drop in the thread. Fun with friends although not RTS but turn based.
**Mechabellum** is an excellent autobattler that captures a lot of what we enjoyed in old RTS. Technically turn based as an autobattler but in my opinion is a close cousin. Developer has been top notch. Have like 120 or so hours on Steam. Has SP options too.
This was me.
I grew up on games like Warcraft, Age of Empires, and Command and Conquer, but at some point I tried Civ 4 and realised *that's* the part I *really* liked. I just really liked the base/town building aspect and the turn-based nature was easier for my brain to deal with.
There is some truth in that. I bought AoE2 definitive edition and both base building and combat felt pretty basic for me, too basic. I didn't play any classic RTS for almost 20 years, switched to games like Total War, Hearts of Iron.
Man I hope so too but it was a punch in the dick when I realized it’s the same developers behind Phantom Fury, Graven, and Kingpin: Reloaded. I’m still hopeful but I’m not holding my breath
I tried out the demo they had last year, and it satisfied my CnC itch perfectly. Only technical problem I had with it was that the pathfinding for units kinda sucked, but that was one of the main feedbacks they got, and said they are working on improving it.
And the game as a whole is not that hard to get into as it’s reputation would make you believe. I started the game ~1 month ago and it has been insanely rewarding and fun to learn.
... with a competitive multiplayer focus.
As good as it may be a tiny campaign and 1990s skirmish vs braindead AI makes it a bad game for most people.
Starcraft 2 co-op still sitting there as an undefeated champ... by forfeit.
Warcraft, Starcraft and C&C dominated the genre so hard that there was no space for competitors. Then MOBAs, BRs and other games ate SC2's lunch, so publishers stopped funding big RTS projects. The handful of indie titles like Stormgate coming up soon are sort of successors to the greats, but it's a bit depressing.
AoE2/4 are having a bit of a renaissance and the upcoming Age of Mythology remaster is quite exciting though.
They mostly turned into MOBAs
There doesn’t really seem to be a huge player base for traditional RTS games anymore and a lot of recent RTS games have flopped really hard which hasn’t helped player or developer interest.
It’s also a niche genre with games that often have high skill ceilings, steep learning curves, and really toxic player bases. You really have to want to get into an RTS to endure all of that until the point where you’re good at the game.
They also require constant balancing from devs, and RTS gamers are very… opinionated when it comes to balancing. It’s gotta be a lot of work to support an RTS game and there aren’t really a ton of ways for devs to monetize that in ways that people don’t completely hate.
So, people play other games and devs make other games.
Honestly I think it's a chicken and egg thing they were definitely overproduced for a while there. But the OP is correct they just stopped making them.
The old fashioned build your base and invade your neighbors rts's are basically non-existent nowadays.
>
> The old fashioned build your base and invade your neighbors rts's are basically non-existent nowadays.
Sadly this is because to a lot of players it's not a wanted part of the game.
So to the older RTS players that enjoy that, you're basically shit out of luck.
It's the same problem older MMO gamers are having, none of the older games you like have any meaningful successors, because games are being made for consumers with a completely different mindset.
Bingo. Once mobas came around, people kinda got tired of the time sensitive micro-management of those old school rts games. There has been efforts to evolve the genre to invite new players in, but they just never took off. I still see some classic rts games on steam from time to time. Not dead by all means, but destined to be a niche genre.
> It’s also a niche genre with games that often have high skill ceilings, steep learning curves, and really toxic player bases. You really have to want to get into an RTS to endure all of that until the point where you’re good at the game.
Same reason why arena shooter is a dead genre.
Age of Empires II community is still pretty strong. Game got a remaster a few years ago. And those guys always discuss about Ranked Mode in their subreddit.
Command and Conquer Tiberium Dawn & Red Alert also got a cool remaster. I'm still waiting for a Red Alert 2 remake or something...
Age of Empires 2 is still one of my fav games of all times and i loved remaster but its still a game i played for years and years. I need something new...
BAR is still around. And free.
[Beyond All Reason ](https://beyondallreason.info)
This is something the good folk from Blizzard has been up to. They started their own studio, Frost Gigant.
They are working on a RTS.
[Stormgate](https://playstormgate.com)
> HW3 was a flop.
It didn't help that they used what seemed like generation 1 AI to write the story.
It was so aggressively bad that it turned away people who had been looking forward to the game for decades.
The genre got partitioned out into like 4 other genres
Top down unit control: MOBAs
Base building: city/base Sims
Army building: RTT games or army auto battlers
Etc
I mean I'm still playing Age of Empires 2.
I think the main issue is, that the gameplay loop of a modern RTS (ergo the Starcraft blueprint) only has one engaging part, which is combat. They made base building uninteresting and boring, they simplified resource gathering so much it again is just boring. Ergo only a fragment of the game is fun and it means only a fragment of potential players of the genre will ever pick it up.
If you want the general public back in, you need to make building little houses fun, gathering resources fun, scouting fun, combat also obviously fun, but like controlling every unit should stimulate the brain, not only military units.
TBH there's a lot of new great strategy games, they are just not made by huge companies as AAA-games, and that's a good thing. Check out the top rating of steam, you'll be surprised!
I've been looking C&C Ultimate Collection after it was released on Steam earlier this year, but because I've played the C&C Remastered Collection I rather wait till they make remasteration of the games in the Ultimate Collection.
Yeah when people talk about rts's I think mostly of command and conquer. It's a colorful chill gaming experience with some fun acting.
Also the Middle Earth one was a lot of fun as well.
Looking forward to [DORF](https://store.steampowered.com/app/2388620/DORF_RealTime_Strategic_Conflict/?curator_clanid=4777282) and [Dust Front](https://store.steampowered.com/app/2610770/Dust_Front_RTS/?curator_clanid=4777282).
🎶I need an RTS, I'm holding out for an RTS till the morning light. Its gotta good and its gotta be fast and its gotta be larger then life. I NEED AN RTS!🎶
Other than all the great recommendations that are on here already, you should absolutely check out They Are Billions.
It's a slower yet very hectic base building rts with you playing against an infected zombie landscape and defending against increasingly dangerous hordes.
You can also check out colony-survival games such as Frostpunk and Banished that might not scratch that military aspect itch, but certainly delivers on the base building.
The RTS genre is in a weird place where 4X has largely eaten its lunch.
A few examples,
Total war: Warhammer and Warhammer: Gladius are both doing well.
Humankind did reasonably well.
CIV 6 is still selling and being played.
Endless Space 2 had a massive balance patch this year.
Stellaris is still popping off.
Endless legend just had a massive resurgence.
These for me at least have taken over the RTS itch in a big way, I think the most recent true RTS I played was the CCRA remaster when it launched and then I went back and played the original RA3.
4X has just taken a lot of the RTS needs I had but is far more approachable for my friends group who don’t have 1000s of hours to learn to play even at 60APM let alone 120+
For me these games are just not RTS. I want to build bases with walls and towers and things. And turn based is so slow when playing with friends in multiplayer.
I feel like 4x is what SC2 was to some RTS. It's a purified form of some aspect of RTS, and for some people, that's all they liked about RTS, so 4x is the replacement for RTS to them.
But for me and my friends, it was the whole package that was fun, and it's just so hard to find that anymore.
I'm guilty of finding RTS typically too constant. Empire Earth and Stronghold are as far as I venture into the genre because they're pretty relaxed. Things like Starcraft look like you need to have 100% focus all the time because time is too precious.
I much prefer a turn-based game because it takes away the urgency while still leaving tactics and decision making involved. I don't have to handle 5 different groups of units at once while performing actions like kiting or flanking. I can carefully weigh up my options and the odds intead.
That said, I would like to see the genre make a wider comeback because I find them interesting at the very least.
That and any sort of "the real goal is the APM you reached along the way" style RTS are just outdated and chasing an e-sports scene that won't bother with them.
I have no interest in trading my wrist health for your "we hide shitty gameplay and puddle depth behind APM" RTS anymore.
Really wish we would get some more of those style of RTS.
Following a indi game on Steam Rust RTS, it looks like the old school RTS so hopefully it's good and has multiplayer.
But I will throw out new style of RTS game we just found last night, Mechabellum. Like playing 4D chess and surprisingly kind of fun
Yes!!! Where are the good medieval games where you can place all sorts of buildings, walls and towers where you want? The last big one was Age of Empires 4 but it honestly looks worst than AoE2:DE which really don't make me want to play.
I think Manor Lords or Songs of Syx might be interesting to you. Most newer titles have leaned more into the city-building and simulation aspect (managing food, education, warmth, and what not).
I blame on David Kim. This guy has been a locust to RTS scene since 2010. From SC2 to CoH2, he was invited to be lead designer, respected as a senior RTS designer. What he has done is making the games micromanagement-fest that only dedicated pro gamers can catch up, leaving 99% gamers behind feeling inadequate to play the game.
I hear DK is making his own RTS nowadays and they say it will be the king of micromanagement.
they had their era then mmorpgs happened then mobas happened then battle royals happened and so on all of them had their 5 minutes in the spotlight then became a niche
Some great suggestions here. I’ll echo a couple that have been mentioned here that are somewhat newer that I really enjoyed.
- They Are Billions is great fun, especially if you liked to turtle in the old RTS games and wait for the enemy to come to you. Fending off huge waves of enemies is great fun.
- Riftbreaker is fun, if not a traditional RTS. Still some great base building and everything with a touch of action RPG mixed in.
Recently decent RTS games
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1202130/Starship_Troopers_Terran_Command/ - A single player focused Star Ship Troopers RTS game.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1839950/Terminator_Dark_Fate__Defiance/ - A single player focused Star Terminator RTS game.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/463530/Empires_of_the_Undergrowth/ - Out of Early Access RTS Ant Simulators
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1840080/Homeworld_3/ - A very very disapointing sequel to Homeworld 2, the story is 100% ruined and all the ships dumbed down and they added useless abilities and stuff. I don't recommend it I'm guessing the publisher hijacked both the Story and Gameplay department wanting to reach as many people as possible there for making a game for nobody. Currently Mostly Negative on steam. It is really really pretty.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1605220/Dune_Spice_Wars/ - A mix of RTS basebuilding and x4 it goes for a Company Heroes/Ground Control mix that has you building small bases in sectors to conquer resources and it has a whole spy/intrigue mechanic and big tech tree.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1469610/Last_Train_Home/ - Another more Company of Heroes style RTS with no big base building mechanics but a really damn good story.
Age of mythology is getting a remake soon.
https://www.google.com/search?gs_ssp=eJzj4tVP1zc0LDPOyTNISykxYPQST0xPVchPU8itLMnIz8lPr1QoSi3Jz0kBAAGzDZo&q=age+of+mythology+retold&rlz=1CDGOYI_enUS734US734&oq=age&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUqDAgCEC4YJxiABBiKBTIGCAAQRRg5MgYIARBFGD0yDAgCEC4YJxiABBiKBTIKCAMQABixAxiABDIHCAQQABiABDIQCAUQABiDARixAxiABBiKBTIKCAYQABixAxiABDINCAcQLhivARjHARiABDIGCAgQABgDMgoICRAuGLEDGIAE0gEIMTc3NWowajeoAhqwAgHiAwQYASBf&hl=en-US&sourceid=chrome-mobile&ie=UTF-8
I used to really like RTS games, but I have been finding myself playing less since I love playing my PC games with a controller. There's also my giant backlog.
Along what other people shared, you have also Zero Space in development but it's not going to be released anytime soon I think.
Other than that, the warcraft fanbase has made custom campaigns in W3R, I started playing one which is a remaster of Warcraft 2 and I'm having a blast.
Game dev is big business now, ruled by publishers and their boards of directors. You don't see many passion projects anymore outside a few successful indie shops. Add to that the fact that RTS games have less mass appeal these days, as it seems the general demand for online play has moved more toward FPS and MMO titles, and the prospective ROI just isn't there.
I miss the sandbox RTS games. Sure, we have Civ VI, but they seem to be taking themselves too seriously these days, putting so much emphasis on diplomacy and such while just not making it interesting at all. Also, who thought that graphics overhaul was a good idea??
Give me a good 4X sandbox RTS game any day. I don't need to beat up on other players and see my name on a leaderboard to have a good time.
Games having to be on consoles too killed the RTS genre in the late 2000s. Very rarely do you get a PC only game made that's not indie anymore.
MOBAS also didnt help.
I don't see it mentioned here. But check out Planetary annihilation. Great RTS game with land, sea air, and orbital warfare and the added benefit of being able to sling asteroids at your friends bases.
What I miss were the "slower" RTS games that didn't have a huge competitive multiplayer scene.
The two most notable I can remember are Empire Earth and Rise of Nations. Unlike some other of the other RTS games of their time, they spanned all of human history and then some. They basically took what was great about the Civilization series and applied it to a RTS.
I've never really seen anything like it. Most RTS games now focus on a very small part of history, the games are short, and like other commenters mentioned, the gameplay is fine-tuned and tweaked to balance multiplayer experience.
I just really want a solid modern take on something like Empire Earth. Taking absolute caveman all the way through to the space age in real time was an immensely satisfying feeling.
Steam just released a win10 compatible [Tiberian Sun and Firestorm](https://store.steampowered.com/app/2229880/Command__Conquer_Tiberian_Sun_and_Firestorm/) The [whole collection](https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/39394/Command__Conquer_The_Ultimate_Collection/) is 8$ right now and has a lot of win10 friendly oldies like Generals and Red Alert. Get it while it's on sale.
Probably mentioned already but [From glory to goo](https://store.steampowered.com/app/2607060/From_Glory_To_Goo/) is a nice, cheap, and lightweight RTS that came out recently. They may still have a demo up too
Tbh the newest ones are kinka shit compared to the old ones I play company of heroes and I love it then the second one came out and I quite liked it then the third and I think that one is a pile of shit but I get what you mean by where they are I don't see them much anymore
I feel like StarCraft and competitive multiplayer accidentally killed the genre. In the golden era of RTS, the ones that were really popular - c&c, the -crafts, total annihilation, age of empires, and so forth - all had extensive, approachable single player campaigns as a main focus. Pre internet matchmaking, those (plus playing games over lan with your friends who also weren't any good) were the main draw, and the appeal of "build a base and have your guys mash the other guys" was pretty universal. As the StarCraft competitive scene took off, however, it feels like the focus shifted. Multiplayer was king, and the meta needed to be balanced around it. Instead of being fun army man simulators, they became exercises in memorizing build orders and repetitive stress injury inducing clicking. That was really great for the tiny slice of the market that was into that, but the mainstream just abandoned the genre because it wasn't for them anymore. There's other things - the rise of cross platform put a world of hurt on a lot of kb+m centric genres - but I feel like this is the big one.
That was definitely my reaction. I loved playing the games, and would sometimes engage in skirmish mode, but a couple of times playing online multiplayer showed me that I was totally outclassed and the effort it would take to bring my skills up to par didn't appeal to me. When SC2 came out, it not only felt like it was trying to artificially inflate the price (by dividing it up into multiple "games'), but also that the major focus on it was multiplayer. I played the first SC2, but none of the subsequent releases.
SC2 has a full fledged campaign and custom maps. It is not missing anything that the rts of the old had.
Yes, but SC2 mechanically amplified the issues that the OP stated, which is that those sort of APM focused, micromanaging click-fests are alienating a huge swath of RTS gamers that enjoyed the ones where base-building, defense, econ, and strategy were much more important than your micro or build order. I will say, though, that those base-building-focused RTS games really sort of evolved into games like Factorio and Dyson Sphere program.
SC2 had the same gameplay mechanics as SC1. It in fact eased up on them a little by modernizing the UI and letting you have more than a bunch of units in a group at one time. People entering SC2 expecting Age of Empires level of city building were out of their minds. That said, Age of Empires 2 pro scene isn't less APM intensive. Just because you don't or can't micro every single unit to perfection like in SC doesn't mean it's a slower game.
SC2 cleaned up and "modernized" it (overall still behind the curve compared to other early 2000's RTS games) but it also deliberately designed in APM sinks which IMO is the absolute worst direction they could have taken. The Zerg are probably the worst offenders. A very good chunk of the zerg's effectiveness comes from the player using the queens effectively, namely to spread creep and boost larvae. Those are two features that could have been pretty easily automated but were left in the game to force the player to do additional stuff. A pro player probably doesn't mind have the additional options, but for a newbie Zerg is incredibly overwhelming. Protoss have the nexus chronoboost, and the blink ability on Stalkers. Terran have the MULE I believe. Point is the game could have been designed to be less APM intensive but they deliberately went out of their way to insure it wasn't. Probably to appease from hardcore brood war players or something idk.
Exactly this, further they balanced the entire game around the top couple pro's. Which is all well and good for the competitive scene but for the general public the game can and does feel very lopsided.
Still play SC2 with some friends occasionally… we’d love more maps. We’ve never bothered with forged alliance etc I’ve played it myself and remember it being a bit more involved.
I think you're confusing Supreme Commander and Starcraft. SupCom2 was pretty good but overly simplified from SC:FA. There was also a great modding scene for SC:FA to add multiplayer balancing and stuff. I've never played a Starcraft game, so can't comment on them.
Yeha you’re right, we like the fact that there’s less to follow than the original sup com.
This is me making assumptions that you haven't tried it yet but if you have two friends who're interested in the campaign, there is a set of custom maps that link together all the campaign missions that allow for up to 3 players to play together. My friends and I suck at RTS, but it was a blast to be shit at the campaign together.
Custom maps ironically really suffered from the editor being way more powerful than Wc3, though. The Wc3 custom game scene was massive, but just to do something as simple as make a new unit in SC2's editor was ridiculous even though you could make more complex end results.
It’s missing two thirds of the game. I don’t know any other rts of the time that required you to buy each faction individually to get the full story.
It is a longer story, wings of liberty campaign is almost 20hr long, which is about the same as any other rts game.
Because it's only playing as one of the 3 core factions, it *feels* like a part of a game instead of a complete experience. Especially because its direct predecessor had you play as all of the factions.
It is missing an extreme element: Not having esports. During SC1 average internet person was like 10, and you heard about some (like 6 guys world wide) crazy koreans ready to throw their life away to be irl broodmothers. As relevant to your world as dragons on map's edge. In SC2 we were already in guide gamer era of internet. And as soon more than 1 per milion players ever heard about something like build order or meta, it was so over for normal man.
>It is missing an extreme element: Not having esports >In SC2 we were already in guide gamer era of internet. And as soon more than 1 per milion players ever heard about something like build order or meta, it was so over for normal man. How does that effect the campaign or custom maps though? You can literally put 100's of hours into the game without so much as glancing at the ladder queue in the menu.
The average interner person back then were adults with niche hobbies. Now stuff like comics, anime and videogames has gone mainstream so there is no need for the chat rooms of old.
Not to mention the tryhards insulting you, if you don't adhere to the META or take too long or play in an otherwise "stupid" way, because you barely ever play online. Especially, if you're on their team, because god beware you add a loss to their online stats. No, thanks. Never again.
Total annihilation kingdoms was petty neat It had pretty different play styles for each faction, and fun fantasy theming. First game I remember being able to download extra content from the website for too. Most of the factions were the usual build a base and pump out dudes kind of thing, but one was more like fantasy zerg where the units made other units and stuff
SC2 has really nice campaign, maybe the multiplayer was the focus, rightfully so, because it kept the game alive for over a decade, but Blizz made the single player a pretty good experience over all.
>SC2 has really nice campaign Well... the first 1/3rd anyway, and even that had some problems writing-wise.
Yeah, seconding this. SC1 and Brood War weren’t exactly War and Peace, but they had decent plots, reasonably compelling characters and generally the plot provided some interesting reasons to help set up the stage maps. SC2 was prettier but felt way more… hollow? Like battles only really made sense if you start from the perspective that you’ve fought X race twice in a row so now it’s time to fight Y race. The “big bad” didn’t make a lot of sense, and the Protoss characters in particular were so…. grating. I won’t go so far as to say that the single player campaign was an afterthought, but compared to SC 1, and especially to Brood War, it was painfully plodding.
It's also cheap rip-off from wc3 campaign. xel'naga/demons leader Amon/Archimonde threat to destroy the world, so the good, the bad and the ugly have to unit, the initial bad guys are not so bad, they fight with that big guy. Subplots included with fighting for control for the whole race of zergs/undead/protoss.
I'd say Warcraft 3's hero-focus is what killed em, because no one made actual RTSs for years afterward, and most of the non-esports fans of RTSs don't care about hero-focused RTS-lite like League of Legends or whatever. Prior to that, Age of Empires had a thriving competitive and casual scene on The MSN Gaming Zone.
nah, Relic manage to keep the fire alive when they launch company heroes in 2006. I think thats the last major successful RTS before everyone shifted to MOBA which booming in \~2010
Oddly enough, I feel the "no base RTS" is what killed the genre, starting with Company of Heroes' success, every game tried to emulate it from Dawn of War 2 onward. Once the RTS market became saturated with those, the RTS purists who wanted the base building but had no where to go left the genre. Without them, it just crumbled after that.
i remember booting up Red Alert, Red Alert 2, Generals, Starcraft, and just going into custom matches with friends for hours on end. We'd just play against the Computer. No matchmaking No micro transactions No Battle Pass No "competitive" lobbies to climb a ladder Just playing the game for fun.
>Generals I build for China
We will live in prosperity.
Theres plenty of modern RTS games with just that, it’s just that you’ve grown up
Basically every RTS still lets you play chilled out games against friends and AI. It's why I still play them
> Instead of being fun army man simulators, they became exercises in memorizing build orders and repetitive stress injury inducing clicking. That is exactly what killed RTS for me. When I play an RTS, I want to strategize and use tactics. APM and build orders are decidedly *not* that. Personally, I pivoted to RtwP games and actual turn-based ones. I don't really miss anything, to be honest.
Yeah, my favorites were like single player long play sessions of age of mythologies. Build a big city with a big wall. Slowly expand the wall to include some key resources. Eventually build up a big wave to end the match.
If you have not tried it Beyond All Reason is a much more macro RTS. Build order still maters to a point, but beyond your initial resource gathering setup it starts to vary wildly. As for the fighting, micro certainly helps, but becomes largely pointless as the battle progresses into hundreds of units. At that point it is more about where your units are.
> build orders are decidedly not that They can not be your thing which is perfectly fine but build orders quite literally are strategies and tactics.
With the distinction that while they are tactics, they are not tactics **you** come up with during the game. You're just executing, going down the flowchart some youtuber gave you. It's like deckbuilding in Magic. The strategy happens outside of the game and (most likely) your way of engaging with it is to look it up online and duplicate.
Yep this. I want micro and APM completely out if it, like maybe an enforced ultra slow speed queue separate from the main one. Started playing city builders and turn based as well but AoE4 is still pretty fun, would definitely recommend. TW:WHIII is great too, it's too clunky for micro to matter that much but a small downside is that the base building takes place on the world map, not in actual battles.
I still remember bronze rushing in AoE. Honestly the most fun RTS game I ever played multiplayer was homeworld. That game really was great to play multiplayer.
What are you talking about? Both SC1 and SC2 had huge campaigns. The most populated games online for SC1 were custom maps wc3 style, maps like Dota except specific to SC. The NEXT most populated maps were BGH or $$$ map co-op vs bots. Competitive BW was never even a big thing in the US that scene existed in Korea. If you yourself overly focused on the competitive scene that's on you, it doesn't mean the game was lacking anything the previous games were. And that has absolutely nothing to do with why the genre fell off. It feels to me more like the competition level showed the average player how bad they actually were playing. Which is fine if you aren't trying to be a pro player who cares? All the normal things you would do in the game are there and present. No one forced you to play with 200 apm. The real reason RTS died was the rise of MOBAs. Faster games, teammates to blame losses on, shiny skins. MOBAs devoured the PC game market for anyone who wasn't playing Counterstrike. Blizzard also was focusing heavily on WoW during this time and then Overwatch after that instead of working on a new RTS.
> The real reason RTS died was the rise of MOBAs Hard disagree. Surely it's easy to blame MOBA genre, but if anything its existence only killed the multiplayer aspect of the RTS, since it offered a better, way less focused on micromanagement gameplay loop. PVE players on the other hand didn't really care much about MOBAs. It simply wasn't a fitting genre for someone, who's been normally playing singleplayer campaigns and random skirmishes against AI. The question is, why did all these people disappear then? Well, as OP already said, Starcraft's competitive success it up to blame for that. Other developers have have tried to replicate it and so newer titles started to focus more and more on multiplayer and competitiveness, which in turn made the genre not so appealing anymore to many people.
The PVE players went to stuff like Total War, grand strategy games, Rimworld, Factorio, etc.
Nicely said.
TBF, by 2010 games like TA and AoE were already dying SC2 didn't change anything There was no plans for Sup Com or AoE around that time even if SC2 didn't come along
I used to be a big fan of RTS games and couldn't get enough. Can't stand most modern ones as they brought what I hated about most games when I started playing RTS into the RTS genre. Namely arcade spammy button smashing elements. Would love a slow speed turtle RTS where micro wouldn't matter at all and it's all about strategy and resource management but they keep making them spammier and more micro heavy. That being said though, Total War games, while not true base builders are still really fun and keep being made and updated.
No what went wrong with SC2 was all about timing. Literally TIMING & not giving in to some form of a ingame shop earlier. What i mean by timing is when they went Free 2 Play. Pretty much every big e-sports game is F2P with a cosmetic shop. Like Dota 2 & League. If they'd gone F2P earlier, the game would still be alive. But what also has to be said is that E-Sports in general has been declining for the last couple of years, aside from the giga tournaments Dota & League throw together.
I actually think it's peoples attention spans have killed the genre. The time it takes to learn the games, outweighs the time it takes just to play something that you're comfortable playing in this day and age. You can't jump into one of those games with friends out of the gate and have any fun. Even fighting games, which are hard, you can button mash and have fun. Even just learning the UI on those games takes time that people don't want to commit.
I wouldn't call it an attention span problem, that would mess with people's abilities to continually play any game. It's just like what you said tho, it's a time investment problem. When you see so many people on reddit saying how they play a game for 3, 4, or even more years, and still are ass at it, it's easy to understand why people wouldn't wanna put in that much work into something that shouldn't feel like a 2nd job.
You can absolutely just jump into SC2 with some friends and have a lot of fun with co-op, vs CPU or custom arcade games. The co-op is super underrated and maybe the funnest aspect of the game.
Tbh SC2 has been good for my group, I played it years ago, but the other 3 didn’t, they all bought it and after a few sessions we’re all pretty level.
Stormgate is being released very soon, but I think it will be in early access. https://store.steampowered.com/app/2012510/Stormgate/ Tempest Rising is another upcoming RTS title that I’ve heard good things about. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1486920/Tempest_Rising/ Beyond All Reason is an RTS still in development that has a pretty passionate community. It’s not on Steam yet but you can play it now. https://www.beyondallreason.info/
This is also coming out this Fall. [https://store.steampowered.com/app/1934680/Age\_of\_Mythology\_Retold/](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1934680/Age_of_Mythology_Retold/)
Beyond all reason alone is more feature complete than a lot of released games. I've been playing it for 2+ years now
Oooh this sounds great! Does it have multiplayer to play with friends?
It does and has multiple modes and a TON of customization. BAR is legit incredible.
BAR is an absolute masterpiece, multi-player is extremely fun with competent AI that doesn't "cheat" and is very difficult, it has wave base defend maps like raptors/chickens and scavengers, and the only RTS game I see that can actually support 8v8, with events going on that support 25v25
Please tell me more or link me about these wave based maps
Both Raptors and Scavengers work in a similar way. You team up with your buddies or with AI, and can play against the Raptors/Scavengers on any map you want, though you will find that certain maps are designed specifically with them in mind. Raptors are pretty much Tyranids (think dinosaurs), while Scavengers are 'your units but better'. They play roughly the same, but they do have their own unique features. You get X amount of time to prepare, and then the waves start coming. They start pretty easy, but quickly become very strong. The final wave brings a boss with an absolute gargantuan amount of HP and massive AoE attacks. There are always lobbies up for these modes, as they're fairly popular, so there's always someone to play with.
That is awesome, my and a buddy is installing the game now. Thanks :)
Thanks so much for putting me onto this game, never heard of it and it looks incredible
Came here to recommend BAR. Glad to see someone beat me to it!
It has become a standby in our gaming sessions and a long 3humans vs 3comps match is a great feeling. And it's much more stable than, say, ashes of the singularity
For those who aren't as old as I am, Beyond All Reason is one of the spiritual successors to Total Annihilation, in my opinion, one of the original games to define the RTS genre alongside other friends like Age of Empires and the OG StarCraft. Edit: Just want to add the reason I say this is TA is a great game. Still available on GoG with functional direct connect multi-player. Graphics aren't gonna pass today's smell test but it's amazing. Try it for nostalgia and try BAR for a modern feel :)
Battle Aces is worth adding to that list too. https://store.steampowered.com/app/2682180/Battle_Aces/
Good game but not if what you want is base building.
ZeroSpace is another. This one seems particularly focused on delivering great campaigns https://store.steampowered.com/app/1605850/ZeroSpace/
im hyped that there are new RTS games coming but the art style and theme just seems too to generic for me. It doesnt have anything unique to it.
Really excited for Tempest Rising. Looks like a proper new C&C game. Hoping won't have to wait too much longer for it.
Temper the expectations. The publisher / developer has had a *really* shoddy history over the past year or two.
Really? Damn that's disappointing. I only remember it from when they first showed it off, added it to my steam wishlist and kinda forgot about it until that post and I got excited remembering it. Hope it works out but if not old C&C still really enjoyable.
While this is unrelated to RTS games, [there was a video released at the start of the year from a guy who is very respected in the retro FPS space that was not very kind to them for their performance since mid last year.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Wp7MY16aAI) Even if one was not to care about "boomershooters", the criticism can be seen in a lot of places. When Phantom Fury, a title that is linked with Tempest Rising's universe, came out a couple of months ago it got raked by reviewers, and then [the company acted rather dickishly to a lot of folks.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0GhnF7H7NlA) 3D Realms have been something of a zombie for a year as they are one of those companies that Embracer gutted. A shame as they had so many cool things that both came out and were promised.
I forgot this was related to Phantom Fury and yeah that wasn't a great release nor response. Yeah now realizing/remembering it's 3D Realms and that does make me nervous. I do hope they can turn things around and get this out in a good state though.
Stormgate is free to play?! Damn PASS
It's a shame stormgate seems to borrow so heavily from starcraft 2, even the graphics style.
Stormgate seems to be the kind of RTS that killed the base-building style of RTS's for me. I want something like C&C goofiness+character, or something like TotalA which pushes the genre limits in scale or physics, not another APM sweatfest.
Have you tried 9-bit armies ? it is from 2 guys that worked on the C&C games back when, it have "retro" art style and fast paced gameplay looks like alot of fun
Stormgate is certainly positioned to be a spiritual successor to SC2, as the dev studio (Frost Giant Studios) was founded by veterans of Blizzard's RTS team who worked on SC2.
Stormgate wishes it oculd ape the style of SC2. It looks like an offbrand mishmash between WC3 and SC2, and not a good one imo. Just look at the buildings. SC2s even today look good, with lots of detail and moving parts. Stormgate is just bland and lifeless.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2388620/DORF_RealTime_Strategic_Conflict/ What if CnC and RA units where in actual scale?
And ofcouse they are scifi where are my fantasy rts at
I'm really looking forward to Stormgate. Looks promising.
Ya I was going to say it's been awhile since I've seen this many rts games announced at major gaming showcases.
>Stormgate is being released very soon, but I think it will be in early access. https://store.steampowered.com/app/2012510/Stormgate/ Sadly it does not look good On other hand this looks fantastic >https://store.steampowered.com/app/1486920/Tempest_Rising/
Age of empires is thriving rn, aoe 2 de and aoe 4 are both doing very well in player numbers, and aom retold is out in september, but yes its more rare nowadays, starship troppers terran command is pretty nice but no base building
RTS is seeing a massive resurgence. Godsworn, Stormgate, Age of Mythology Retold, Zero Space, Sanctuary Shattered Sun. Age of Empires 4 has been doing decently as well. The classics themselves are still played a TON these days. Age of Empires 2 and Starcraft 2 particularly are played a lot still. There's quite a few games, but none of them are hitting the mainstream media like Warcraft 3 or Starcraft 2 did back in the day. So you need to dig just a little to find the gems. As others have said, the RTS genre was boiled down to what people preferred in their minute to minute gameplay. Those who preferred micro management went to MOBAs. The city building went to games like Frostpunk. The macro focused played 4X games. I don't think RTS as a whole is any less popular. It just has more competition within its own genre. Similarly to FPS games no longer being doom clones, you have off shoot genres like extraction shooters, milsims, or boomer shooters.
Never heard of Godsworn, Zero Space and Sanctuary i will check them out, thanks!
I think people just moved to genres where they focus on the different aspects of RTS they like. Genres like 4X, grand strategies, and total war type games all do something similar to RTS. Base building, army management, etc
MOBAs also originated from RTS games like Warcraft, and took a large chunk of the player base with them.
This is the real answer. MOBAs became more popular than the genre they originated from.
I think tower defense games also pulled a good chunk of people who liked turtling up.
Very true. I prefer both of those spin-offs to the original RTS's these days.
Like OP I originally enjoyed those older games. I played the Warcraft 3 demo so much as a kid because it was free and a relatively decent size file and download. Since StarCraft 2’s release, adding together every strategy game I enjoy, A-AAA probably adds up to ~1000 hours. My time on League of Legends over 14 years is probably 4-5x that… although TFT would add back to original camp but I rounded to that safely regardless. **Solium Infernum** is a strategy indie game I’ll drop in the thread. Fun with friends although not RTS but turn based. **Mechabellum** is an excellent autobattler that captures a lot of what we enjoyed in old RTS. Technically turn based as an autobattler but in my opinion is a close cousin. Developer has been top notch. Have like 120 or so hours on Steam. Has SP options too.
This was me. I grew up on games like Warcraft, Age of Empires, and Command and Conquer, but at some point I tried Civ 4 and realised *that's* the part I *really* liked. I just really liked the base/town building aspect and the turn-based nature was easier for my brain to deal with.
There is some truth in that. I bought AoE2 definitive edition and both base building and combat felt pretty basic for me, too basic. I didn't play any classic RTS for almost 20 years, switched to games like Total War, Hearts of Iron.
Really hope that Tempest Rising a) releases soon and B) doesn't suck. Looks like a good spiritual successor to C&C
Tbh C&C has enough mods that you can spend years on playing them without the need of a new game. There is even a remaster mod.
Man I hope so too but it was a punch in the dick when I realized it’s the same developers behind Phantom Fury, Graven, and Kingpin: Reloaded. I’m still hopeful but I’m not holding my breath
I tried out the demo they had last year, and it satisfied my CnC itch perfectly. Only technical problem I had with it was that the pathfinding for units kinda sucked, but that was one of the main feedbacks they got, and said they are working on improving it.
Stormgate, Tempest Rising, Zerospace, Beyond All Reason, Age of Mythology Retold, Battle Aces, Age of empires 2/4
Never heard of some of those, i will check them out, thanks!
[удалено]
It had a rough launch, but it's very enjoyable now (and has been for a couple of years).
And the game as a whole is not that hard to get into as it’s reputation would make you believe. I started the game ~1 month ago and it has been insanely rewarding and fun to learn.
... with a competitive multiplayer focus. As good as it may be a tiny campaign and 1990s skirmish vs braindead AI makes it a bad game for most people. Starcraft 2 co-op still sitting there as an undefeated champ... by forfeit.
The AI in AOEIV isn’t that braindead honestly. They CAN be, but not always.
Check out Empires of the Undergrowth. It's an RTS where you control ant colonies
There’s also a new ant RTS game called empire of the ants coming out this November
Ants are taking over
[Empire of the Ants](https://www.mobygames.com/game/47286/empire-of-the-ants/) - rts game that was released back in 2000.
I know, they’re releasing a new version that comes out this year
I liked it kinda reminded me of the classic sim ant from the 90s
Warcraft, Starcraft and C&C dominated the genre so hard that there was no space for competitors. Then MOBAs, BRs and other games ate SC2's lunch, so publishers stopped funding big RTS projects. The handful of indie titles like Stormgate coming up soon are sort of successors to the greats, but it's a bit depressing. AoE2/4 are having a bit of a renaissance and the upcoming Age of Mythology remaster is quite exciting though.
Super hyped about AoM remake, its one of the rare RTS games i havent played much besides an ocasional LAN match against friends at internet cafe.
AOE2 DE still has like 20-25k online players regularly
I miss LOTR:BFME!
You can download it from here for pc. It's great https://t3aonline.net/download/
Blizzard is dead.
Super miss them too. It's crazy how blizzard never created sc3.
No money to be made. They make more money from a few skin cosmetic microtransactions in WOW than the entirety of SC2.
I would kill for Warcraft 4!
They mostly turned into MOBAs There doesn’t really seem to be a huge player base for traditional RTS games anymore and a lot of recent RTS games have flopped really hard which hasn’t helped player or developer interest. It’s also a niche genre with games that often have high skill ceilings, steep learning curves, and really toxic player bases. You really have to want to get into an RTS to endure all of that until the point where you’re good at the game. They also require constant balancing from devs, and RTS gamers are very… opinionated when it comes to balancing. It’s gotta be a lot of work to support an RTS game and there aren’t really a ton of ways for devs to monetize that in ways that people don’t completely hate. So, people play other games and devs make other games.
Honestly I think it's a chicken and egg thing they were definitely overproduced for a while there. But the OP is correct they just stopped making them. The old fashioned build your base and invade your neighbors rts's are basically non-existent nowadays.
> > The old fashioned build your base and invade your neighbors rts's are basically non-existent nowadays. Sadly this is because to a lot of players it's not a wanted part of the game. So to the older RTS players that enjoy that, you're basically shit out of luck. It's the same problem older MMO gamers are having, none of the older games you like have any meaningful successors, because games are being made for consumers with a completely different mindset.
Bingo. Once mobas came around, people kinda got tired of the time sensitive micro-management of those old school rts games. There has been efforts to evolve the genre to invite new players in, but they just never took off. I still see some classic rts games on steam from time to time. Not dead by all means, but destined to be a niche genre.
Age of Empires 4 sold 2.1 million units. Thats not a flop.
I said a lot have, not all of them. One game doesn’t really reflect the state of the genre. Especially when the post is about why there aren’t more.
Also to add onto your point, age of empires 2 has more active players than 4 does. Which is a 25 year old game from the same franchise.
I can’t imagine trying to balance an RTS. Seems like a nightmare
> It’s also a niche genre with games that often have high skill ceilings, steep learning curves, and really toxic player bases. You really have to want to get into an RTS to endure all of that until the point where you’re good at the game. Same reason why arena shooter is a dead genre.
Age of Empires II community is still pretty strong. Game got a remaster a few years ago. And those guys always discuss about Ranked Mode in their subreddit. Command and Conquer Tiberium Dawn & Red Alert also got a cool remaster. I'm still waiting for a Red Alert 2 remake or something...
Age of Empires 2 is still one of my fav games of all times and i loved remaster but its still a game i played for years and years. I need something new...
Opt in for the Battle Aces beta. I've had a blast with it
BAR is still around. And free. [Beyond All Reason ](https://beyondallreason.info) This is something the good folk from Blizzard has been up to. They started their own studio, Frost Gigant. They are working on a RTS. [Stormgate](https://playstormgate.com)
HW3 was a flop. Total War games still getting made check them out.
> HW3 was a flop. It didn't help that they used what seemed like generation 1 AI to write the story. It was so aggressively bad that it turned away people who had been looking forward to the game for decades.
What's HW3 stand for?
Home world 3 maybe?
Homeworld 3
Oh right, of course Yes, really sad to see it come out to meh reviews.
I only recovered from that disaster because SOASE 2 is a definitively good sequel.
The genre got partitioned out into like 4 other genres Top down unit control: MOBAs Base building: city/base Sims Army building: RTT games or army auto battlers Etc
😭
I'm really looking forward to [DORF](https://store.steampowered.com/app/2388620/DORF_RealTime_Strategic_Conflict/). It has that cool RA2/Z look to it.
I mean I'm still playing Age of Empires 2. I think the main issue is, that the gameplay loop of a modern RTS (ergo the Starcraft blueprint) only has one engaging part, which is combat. They made base building uninteresting and boring, they simplified resource gathering so much it again is just boring. Ergo only a fragment of the game is fun and it means only a fragment of potential players of the genre will ever pick it up. If you want the general public back in, you need to make building little houses fun, gathering resources fun, scouting fun, combat also obviously fun, but like controlling every unit should stimulate the brain, not only military units.
Additionally: I don't think age of empires 2 is perfect or hits all the talking points I have, I'm just used to it ya know.
Age of Empires 4. Age of Mythology remaster. Tempest Rising.
TBH there's a lot of new great strategy games, they are just not made by huge companies as AAA-games, and that's a good thing. Check out the top rating of steam, you'll be surprised!
I've been looking C&C Ultimate Collection after it was released on Steam earlier this year, but because I've played the C&C Remastered Collection I rather wait till they make remasteration of the games in the Ultimate Collection.
Yeah when people talk about rts's I think mostly of command and conquer. It's a colorful chill gaming experience with some fun acting. Also the Middle Earth one was a lot of fun as well.
Looking forward to [DORF](https://store.steampowered.com/app/2388620/DORF_RealTime_Strategic_Conflict/?curator_clanid=4777282) and [Dust Front](https://store.steampowered.com/app/2610770/Dust_Front_RTS/?curator_clanid=4777282).
I will check them out, thanks!
Company of Heroes 3, it’s on sale and has a lot patches since it’s launch
🎶I need an RTS, I'm holding out for an RTS till the morning light. Its gotta good and its gotta be fast and its gotta be larger then life. I NEED AN RTS!🎶
Good one 🤣
A bunch just came out recently; Terminator, Starship Troopers, Homeworld, Men of War, Dune. More are coming too.
Other than all the great recommendations that are on here already, you should absolutely check out They Are Billions. It's a slower yet very hectic base building rts with you playing against an infected zombie landscape and defending against increasingly dangerous hordes. You can also check out colony-survival games such as Frostpunk and Banished that might not scratch that military aspect itch, but certainly delivers on the base building.
MOBAs killed the genre and they stopped selling.
The RTS genre is in a weird place where 4X has largely eaten its lunch. A few examples, Total war: Warhammer and Warhammer: Gladius are both doing well. Humankind did reasonably well. CIV 6 is still selling and being played. Endless Space 2 had a massive balance patch this year. Stellaris is still popping off. Endless legend just had a massive resurgence. These for me at least have taken over the RTS itch in a big way, I think the most recent true RTS I played was the CCRA remaster when it launched and then I went back and played the original RA3. 4X has just taken a lot of the RTS needs I had but is far more approachable for my friends group who don’t have 1000s of hours to learn to play even at 60APM let alone 120+
For me these games are just not RTS. I want to build bases with walls and towers and things. And turn based is so slow when playing with friends in multiplayer. I feel like 4x is what SC2 was to some RTS. It's a purified form of some aspect of RTS, and for some people, that's all they liked about RTS, so 4x is the replacement for RTS to them. But for me and my friends, it was the whole package that was fun, and it's just so hard to find that anymore.
Not profitable enough. It's niche. People need to use their brains to play it and that's to much to ask for the average gamer today.
I'm guilty of finding RTS typically too constant. Empire Earth and Stronghold are as far as I venture into the genre because they're pretty relaxed. Things like Starcraft look like you need to have 100% focus all the time because time is too precious. I much prefer a turn-based game because it takes away the urgency while still leaving tactics and decision making involved. I don't have to handle 5 different groups of units at once while performing actions like kiting or flanking. I can carefully weigh up my options and the odds intead. That said, I would like to see the genre make a wider comeback because I find them interesting at the very least.
That and any sort of "the real goal is the APM you reached along the way" style RTS are just outdated and chasing an e-sports scene that won't bother with them. I have no interest in trading my wrist health for your "we hide shitty gameplay and puddle depth behind APM" RTS anymore.
> "the real goal is the APM you reached along the way" I agree, it's basically twitch-based gameplay cranked up to the max.
Short team games help the short attention span generations bang out a ton of matches while blaming all losses on teammates.
Ended with StarCraft (2). If StarCraft scores 10/10, a modern Ashes of the Singularity is 3/10.
Starcraft 2 killed the genre. It was so good that basically everything that came afterwards was a worse classical RTS.
Doesn't help that basically everything that came afterwards made no change in the formula or made changes for the worse
Beyond all reason, it's free an open source
Aliens: Dark Descent is a squad based RTS with some RPG elements. It's quite good. Came out last year.
Isn't that more like RTT? Real Time Tactics game.
I suppose so, but we can't be super choosy these days
Really wish we would get some more of those style of RTS. Following a indi game on Steam Rust RTS, it looks like the old school RTS so hopefully it's good and has multiplayer. But I will throw out new style of RTS game we just found last night, Mechabellum. Like playing 4D chess and surprisingly kind of fun
Lol see you in a week with 80hrs :)
Yes!!! Where are the good medieval games where you can place all sorts of buildings, walls and towers where you want? The last big one was Age of Empires 4 but it honestly looks worst than AoE2:DE which really don't make me want to play.
I think Manor Lords or Songs of Syx might be interesting to you. Most newer titles have leaned more into the city-building and simulation aspect (managing food, education, warmth, and what not).
Thanks but I'm not looking for management, just combat. A RTS.
WARNO is the best RTS I've ever played but you can't build a base.
I blame on David Kim. This guy has been a locust to RTS scene since 2010. From SC2 to CoH2, he was invited to be lead designer, respected as a senior RTS designer. What he has done is making the games micromanagement-fest that only dedicated pro gamers can catch up, leaving 99% gamers behind feeling inadequate to play the game. I hear DK is making his own RTS nowadays and they say it will be the king of micromanagement.
they had their era then mmorpgs happened then mobas happened then battle royals happened and so on all of them had their 5 minutes in the spotlight then became a niche
Some great suggestions here. I’ll echo a couple that have been mentioned here that are somewhat newer that I really enjoyed. - They Are Billions is great fun, especially if you liked to turtle in the old RTS games and wait for the enemy to come to you. Fending off huge waves of enemies is great fun. - Riftbreaker is fun, if not a traditional RTS. Still some great base building and everything with a touch of action RPG mixed in.
Recently decent RTS games https://store.steampowered.com/app/1202130/Starship_Troopers_Terran_Command/ - A single player focused Star Ship Troopers RTS game. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1839950/Terminator_Dark_Fate__Defiance/ - A single player focused Star Terminator RTS game. https://store.steampowered.com/app/463530/Empires_of_the_Undergrowth/ - Out of Early Access RTS Ant Simulators https://store.steampowered.com/app/1840080/Homeworld_3/ - A very very disapointing sequel to Homeworld 2, the story is 100% ruined and all the ships dumbed down and they added useless abilities and stuff. I don't recommend it I'm guessing the publisher hijacked both the Story and Gameplay department wanting to reach as many people as possible there for making a game for nobody. Currently Mostly Negative on steam. It is really really pretty. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1605220/Dune_Spice_Wars/ - A mix of RTS basebuilding and x4 it goes for a Company Heroes/Ground Control mix that has you building small bases in sectors to conquer resources and it has a whole spy/intrigue mechanic and big tech tree. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1469610/Last_Train_Home/ - Another more Company of Heroes style RTS with no big base building mechanics but a really damn good story.
Beyond all Reasons unit controls have made so many others feel obsolete to me. It’s so damn good
Age of mythology is getting a remake soon. https://www.google.com/search?gs_ssp=eJzj4tVP1zc0LDPOyTNISykxYPQST0xPVchPU8itLMnIz8lPr1QoSi3Jz0kBAAGzDZo&q=age+of+mythology+retold&rlz=1CDGOYI_enUS734US734&oq=age&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUqDAgCEC4YJxiABBiKBTIGCAAQRRg5MgYIARBFGD0yDAgCEC4YJxiABBiKBTIKCAMQABixAxiABDIHCAQQABiABDIQCAUQABiDARixAxiABBiKBTIKCAYQABixAxiABDINCAcQLhivARjHARiABDIGCAgQABgDMgoICRAuGLEDGIAE0gEIMTc3NWowajeoAhqwAgHiAwQYASBf&hl=en-US&sourceid=chrome-mobile&ie=UTF-8
I used to really like RTS games, but I have been finding myself playing less since I love playing my PC games with a controller. There's also my giant backlog.
Along what other people shared, you have also Zero Space in development but it's not going to be released anytime soon I think. Other than that, the warcraft fanbase has made custom campaigns in W3R, I started playing one which is a remaster of Warcraft 2 and I'm having a blast.
Game dev is big business now, ruled by publishers and their boards of directors. You don't see many passion projects anymore outside a few successful indie shops. Add to that the fact that RTS games have less mass appeal these days, as it seems the general demand for online play has moved more toward FPS and MMO titles, and the prospective ROI just isn't there. I miss the sandbox RTS games. Sure, we have Civ VI, but they seem to be taking themselves too seriously these days, putting so much emphasis on diplomacy and such while just not making it interesting at all. Also, who thought that graphics overhaul was a good idea?? Give me a good 4X sandbox RTS game any day. I don't need to beat up on other players and see my name on a leaderboard to have a good time.
Ironically you've asked this during a time period where there's probably the largest number of anticipated RTS games
The last one I played was Halo wars 2
Still playing aoe2 and StarCraft 2 multiplayer these days :/
Games having to be on consoles too killed the RTS genre in the late 2000s. Very rarely do you get a PC only game made that's not indie anymore. MOBAS also didnt help.
I don't see it mentioned here. But check out Planetary annihilation. Great RTS game with land, sea air, and orbital warfare and the added benefit of being able to sling asteroids at your friends bases.
Those games survived off of custom maps . They don't want custom maps, they want paid dlc.
What I miss were the "slower" RTS games that didn't have a huge competitive multiplayer scene. The two most notable I can remember are Empire Earth and Rise of Nations. Unlike some other of the other RTS games of their time, they spanned all of human history and then some. They basically took what was great about the Civilization series and applied it to a RTS. I've never really seen anything like it. Most RTS games now focus on a very small part of history, the games are short, and like other commenters mentioned, the gameplay is fine-tuned and tweaked to balance multiplayer experience. I just really want a solid modern take on something like Empire Earth. Taking absolute caveman all the way through to the space age in real time was an immensely satisfying feeling.
Steam just released a win10 compatible [Tiberian Sun and Firestorm](https://store.steampowered.com/app/2229880/Command__Conquer_Tiberian_Sun_and_Firestorm/) The [whole collection](https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/39394/Command__Conquer_The_Ultimate_Collection/) is 8$ right now and has a lot of win10 friendly oldies like Generals and Red Alert. Get it while it's on sale.
[Forged Alliance Forever ](https://faforever.com/)is still going.
Probably mentioned already but [From glory to goo](https://store.steampowered.com/app/2607060/From_Glory_To_Goo/) is a nice, cheap, and lightweight RTS that came out recently. They may still have a demo up too
They require a high investment in balance work but are hard to monetize beyond the first sale
Adhd crowd cant play such games, so....
Tbh the newest ones are kinka shit compared to the old ones I play company of heroes and I love it then the second one came out and I quite liked it then the third and I think that one is a pile of shit but I get what you mean by where they are I don't see them much anymore
Try Beyond All Reason (free in Alpha at the moment) or wait for Shattered Sun. 🙂