Best casual RTS's?

Crone

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Despite the ton of games I've picked up recently on Xbox and PC I've got an itch to build a base and army and fight peoples!

I used to love and probably still would Warcraft 3 4v4 matches, but figured by now there has to be some more modern rts games that are good.

There is the obvious star craft 2, but I feel it's a game that's so populated by competitive gamer wannabes that they'd rage when I suck?

Any others that are good?
 

Nirgon

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I actually liked C&C 3 : Kane's Wrath quite a bit. There's still people playing online.

Getting it to work on Steam and setting up the whole Origin thing... was not fun though. Once I got through that it was very, very enjoyable.
 
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Zaphid

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Casual starcraft means playing customs, probably something like monobattles, desert strike or tower defence, because the ladder works best for 1v1. Even then, it tries to keep you at 50% winrate, so if you don't mind losing half your games, you might find it enjoyable even if you are in the lowest league.
 

Flank_sl

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Team games in SC2 are not competitive. Blizzard has used crappy (to me) maps for the pool, which only allows each player to have 2 or 3 bases. This makes it a lot easier for casual players. On the other hand, the game really is not designed for team games, but you wont even notice that at a low level.

As for raging when you suck, a few will. That will be the same in any popular game, though. Especially blizzard games as their casual reputation attracts idiots. Most dont bother to rage though. The bnet interface is very antisocial and people dont tend to chat much.
 

Noodleface

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SC2 is one of, if not the best, RTS around. People will bitch, people will complain, but when you start out you will be put down into Bronze level if you suck. It's not like you'll be getting matched against the best of the best. Playing 3v3 or 4v4 is a lot of fun because it allows you to learn the game and usually you won't die immediately. It's a good game.

Unfortunately, because of the compettitive nature of RTS games now, there really aren't any that are casual friendly.
 

Zaphid

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SC2 is the best right now simply because nobody makes traditional RTS anymore. Usually you get some squad based stuff or dota-lite, with little to no base building and research. You can see it reflected in the custom map scene, RTS of the old days are pretty hardcore compared to most things coming out recently, where you will get your face smashed into the dirt if you miss any aspect of the game, memorize a research tree and the skill cap is literally sky high. On the other hand it's easy for me to get addicted to the rush you get when you win a 1v1 game, because you just wiped the floor with them, no excuses, they just played worse than you.
 

Crone

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So it sounds like star craft is king.

Would it allow me opportunities to build up a bunch of flying seige, sneak behind someone's base, take out their town hall and fly away before they were able to tp back home? Lol favorite move in Warcraft 3!
 

Strifen

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So it sounds like star craft is king.

Would it allow me opportunities to build up a bunch of flying seige, sneak behind someone's base, take out their town hall and fly away before they were able to tp back home? Lol favorite move in Warcraft 3!
Yeah pretty much every race can do something like that, some not as well as the others. The best at doing this kinda thing is probably Terran because they have medivacs (dropships) that you can load your infantry into. If you're sneaky with them you can drop 2-3 medivacs of marines/mauraders stimpack for bonus + dps and then melt their main and load up + take off before they can even really react.
 

Crone

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Awesome! Sometimes not the best move, but larger team games I enjoy because it provides opportunities like this and I find that pretty fun.

Thanks for the tips.
 

Bandwagon

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Awesome! Sometimes not the best move, but larger team games I enjoy because it provides opportunities like this and I find that pretty fun.

Thanks for the tips.
I'm necro'ing this motherfucker because no one mentioned Total Annihilation. Shame on you.




...or Battle for Middle Earth II, which is damn near impossible to find nowadays.
 
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a_skeleton_05

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World in Conflict is another older RTS that is a must-play. It surprisingly has some of the best writing and character growth there has been in a video game. You might already own it too as it was free on UPLAY a while back.
 
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Intropy

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Its a bit different style than the old school RTS' but might be worth checking out 'They Are Billions' for a casual fix.
 
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faille

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World in Conflict is another older RTS that is a must-play. It surprisingly has some of the best writing and character growth there has been in a video game. You might already own it too as it was free on UPLAY a while back.
World in Conflict was so awesome. Had so many unique ideas I hadn't seen before. Wish there was more of a community for it
 
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Crone

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Is there anywhere legit to buy Battle for Middle Earth 2, other than ~$140 on Amazon?
They even made HD mods for it. :(

Here’s how you can play Battle for Middle-Earth 1 and 2 online with HD models

Original publishers EA were forced to switch off the official servers on New Year’s Eve 2010 due to the expiration of their Lord of the Rings videogame licence...

But where there is a will, there is a way... You probably can recognize where this is from?

0e87ff905f5a79cb49f777f5ed8c48f4.png
 
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meStevo

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We only comp stomp, but our goto RTS is Company of Heroes 2.

Never got into TA, but loved Supreme Commander 1 and 2. Planetary Annihilation really didn't click for my friends and I. Cossacks is a pretty good modern Age of Empires and relatively cheap, except the AI doesn't know how boats work so it's kinda lame if you're on different islands.

Only recently got into Ashes of the Singularity, and it's not bad, every game just kinda feels the same.

But again, all the stuff we play is co-op / comp stomp.
 
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Bandwagon

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Company of heroes was great.

I don't play competitive RTS at all, and the main appeal for me has always been building a self-sustaining base/city/fort that can automatically fend off attacks and continue collecting resources. I want something that I can spend a few hours building and then leave it running overnight, and still be there in the morning.

That's why I loved TA, especially the metal maps that mean you're not forced to expand. The best part was the construction planes that you could put on a base-wide patrol where they would automatically repair buildings and ground units and reclaim wreckage, and you could drop an air repair pad in their patrol route so they would automatically land and repair. I did the same thing with the hawk planes that had a patrol route slightly outside the construction route, about half the range of the annihilators. Add a couple nuke defense silos and a battery of big Bertha's, and nothing gets close.

I don't remember which one, but there was an Age of Empires that did this really well, too. You could set your villagers to auto replant fields. That was probably my favorite because the economy was a much bigger factor than in TA. You just had to disable the fucking trebuchets if you wanted to be able to walk away without getting destroyed by AI.
 
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a_skeleton_05

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RTS' were the perfect outlet for autistic behaviour for a young kid. I used to do things like cut down every tree on an island map in Warcraft 2 and make sure every island had a ring of towers around them along with max capacity armies being positioned strategically around the map, and had navies patrolling and shit. Nevermind that the enemy only consisted of a single building out in the middle of fucking nowhere. God damn I wish I still had that sort of creative energy.