Coping With Chaos In RTS Games

tinjaw · Post by **tinjaw** » May 01 2004

I have played many games for many years. However, most of them have been turn-based. I have played some RTS games including Command and Conquer when it was first released. Through the years I have played other popular RTS titles like Age of Empires, Empire Earth, and Rise of Nations. Especially with the expansion pack for Rise of Nations now available I am very interested in playing RTS games more often.

Last night I played my first multi-player game of SR2010 (Beta 4) and was overwhelmed by the chaos that ensued after the amount of units involved became large and there was combat all over a fairly large map.

I decided to gather hints and tips from other RTS gamers as to how they cope with the chaos of RTS games for two purposes. The first is to both play better and enjoy the games more myself. The second is that I wish to write an article for publication if I can get enough good information to support one.

Therefore I open the thread to you folks to provide me some hints and tips you have that help you deal with the overwhelming amount of "stuff"

dizzycow · Post by **dizzycow** » May 01 2004

well my tips:

1. have priority list. work in turn base.
2. never stop and tink about somting. go do someting eals and tink wile you are moving units.
3.have a friend who helps you in planing and reminding research.. very juseful in the heat off battle. but its cinda cheating..
4.learn the basik stratagy and how to emplant them fast. not just teori..
5. make yours interceptors in nummbers like 1 and 2. than you can stop any paratrop attack agains you in time

hmm proboly more but I cant tink off more..

jalapeno · Post by **jalapeno** » May 01 2004

wish I could get into beta to add.

tinjaw · Post by **tinjaw** » May 02 2004

What "skills" have you acquired in one RTS game that transfered to the next RTS game that you moved on to. For example, what skills did you learn while playing AoE that help you play SR2010?

jalapeno · Post by **jalapeno** » May 02 2004

Of course, I'm not in beta, but I think the overall strategy and tactics portion of RTS will be directly transferable to SR2010.

Here's a list

1. Attack with small force directly at enemy. Flank the enemy with your main force and attack from the back while attacking enemy reinforcements with airpower (or pound with artillery if possible).

2. Attack with small force while flanking with large force, move the large force towards main cities and production, cause mayhem.

3. Destroy enemy capability to produce units before attacking. Destroy enemy economic capability as a second priority(unless you would like it for yourself, then occupy it)

4. Use terrain to hide your numbers. Show a small force. Hide your main force in the trees or behind a mountain. Hide your airforce and unit building facilities if possible. Hrmm, wonder if this game will have hardened bunkers for airunits?

5. Attack the weakpoint in the enemy's defenses. Cut off supply. Watch enemy's units wither away.

6. When you have a choice between a few slow but powerful units and alot of fast units, go with fast. Speed is usually of the essence. Use slow units to defend choke points and facilities. Never use them to defend open areas or for attacking. They will always get flanked. Fast units can be used for attacking, defending, and intercepting enemy forces.

Anyways, pretty simple strategies but effective.

tinjaw · Post by **tinjaw** » May 03 2004

These are good strategy tips for just about any game that involves combat. My question is about the mechanics of playing RTS games. Some suggestions have included using Ctrl + # groups and memorizing all the hot keys.

I am looking for suggestions from anybody who has played RTS games (not just SR2010) and has found some way to deal with the chaos.

R0B3E · Post by **R0B3E** » May 03 2004

I have found no such chaos in playing the SR2010 beta in single player mode. I use the pause button frequently, and never go above the lowest speed level except between battles. Adjusting the agression level and militiary initiative will allow units to self-return to base when they need healing, and retreat in the event of a potential rout, if you like. You don't need to control that. I prefer total control however and have initiative, except on combat aircraft, set to 0. In comparison with AoE/C&C, I wish AoE/C&C had a pause button. You can use the Esc button in AoE/C&C, but cannot issue orders and the screen is covered with a dialog box. Large battles become a click-fest. Not so in SR2010. You can also set up much longer production ques in SR2010 than other RTS.
It seems to me that the pause/slow speed method is more real-world than turn-based is. In slowest SR2010 game time it takes about 5 seconds for an F-15E to fly from Indianapolis to Toledo, which is unrealistic. Therefore pausing the game to plan your next move while it's mid-flight adds a level of realistic timing. Turn-based games [which I love BTW] are limited by the programmers setting of action points per turn. The recent turn-based "Silent Storm" is a good example of the programmers setting somewhat arbitrary values to actions & shots. What I love about SR2010, is that there is this realistic, fluid flow to battles.
In your potential book, don't forget to mention cheating AI. Have you ever played AoE at harder levels without fog of war and seen how fast the enemy builds up? Not fair in my book.

Slater · Post by **Slater** » May 03 2004

Hmmmm, is a 'real-time' feature - at least for full scale battles - a possibility? It'd certainly help plan the minutiae.

tinjaw · Post by **tinjaw** » May 05 2004

bump.

I am very interested in getting more answers to this question.

Post by **George Geczy** » May 06 2004

The general battle points made by jalapeno are quite good, and as you say they apply to most battle games and most RTS's.

Regarding the 'Chaos' factor, I tend to think that SR2010 has a much lower level of 'chaos' than most other RTS. Of course, David and I used to play C&C or Empire Earth on the 'huge map' settings, with a maximum 'pop cap', so we made the game pretty much as chaotic as possible; but when the battles started the fur would start flying pretty quickly. Combined with no restrictions on supply lines or fuel/ammo capacity, things in traditional RTS games do quickly become clickfests.

The ways SR2010 changes some of the chaos:

1) Production and Resources can 'take care of themselves' under AI control. All too often in an RTS, you'll have 'peasants' standing around doing nothing, or unit production stalled because you didn't sell your wood overstock for gold, or a military unit build queue sitting idle, etc. We've eliminated most of that.

2) In SR2010, Ammo, Fuel and Supply lines keep battles from becoming endless rushes. Push too far and you'll be crushed, so you'll need to regroup and resupply.

3) Variable Speed settings in-game. In all the MP games I've played so far, nobody complains if a player wants to go to slow speed while a battle is raging. We will be adding an option to make speed changes a host-only function, but in general being able to change speed on the fly works very well.

Another element of the variable speed is that, as mentioned above, in single player mode you can pause as much as you like. In pause mode you can give all orders, change settings, etc, just the same way as you can when time is rolling. The RTS games I've played either do this poorly (ie Empire Earth) or not at all.

4) Local Unit Initiative - as also mentioned above, in SR2010 the AI can automatically use available units for defense or interdiction, making the need to 'watch everything' much less important. None of the RTS games I've played do this very well or at all. Leave some units without orders on your various fronts, and the AI will use them to slow down any local attacks. In future beta versions this will be improved even further.

Of course there will be cases when 'not paying attention' will have adverse results - for instance, you want to save your navy and you don't notice that a larger force has come into range; you would have retreated, but your AI navy will stand the ground and fight bravely to the end instead. As well, multiple-front battles are always chaotic, because you'll need to move your land and air forces to the most useful positions and make sure that any large-scale assaults are countered. But, there's no getting around that.

There has been suggestion for a 'super slo-mo' speed, ie half or less of the current 'slow speed', I don't know if that was going to be implemented or not.

-- George.

Vesson · Post by **Vesson** » May 06 2004

A bit off topic, but related... I've noticed that certain map points have much higher defensive values than others, but aren't obviously so just from looking at the map.

Are filters going to be available similar to the high ground filter? Or can we 'paint' or own 'high value' defensive spots onto the maps?

Could help in those multifront slightly more chaotic maps.

jalapeno · Post by **jalapeno** » May 06 2004

On 2004-05-05 22:20, George Geczy wrote:
We will be adding an option to make speed changes a host-only function

When you guys do this, I have a feature suggestion. Turn the other player's speed control keys into a communications key that sends a broadcast to the other players. Something like "player 1 requests slow speed" or "player 2 requests fast speed"

Just a suggestion.

Post by **Balthagor** » May 06 2004

I like it. I've added it to our "tasks" database.

jalapeno · Post by **jalapeno** » May 06 2004

Cool, can I get into beta now?

Post by **BattleGoat** » May 06 2004

"Defensive Spots"... There is no plan to have a map filter to show good defensive spots. Sometimes you can judge by the look of the terrain, heavy forests, mountains, etc. What I would suggest is that if it looks like this will be a used defensive point, build an "Emplacement" so you know where the strongest defensive land is, and then if you need to thwart an attack via that point, garrison some units in it. This will add even more to the defensive strength of the hex!