Every time I''m victorious in a Starcraft or Age of Empires game I have this overwhelming urge to build up all the territory I''ve captured. Anybody else get this? It''s like some weird imperialist conquerer thing. I''ve massacred my enemies, stolen their land, and now I want to build bridges and homes on it?!?! Of course, I could go play SimCity... but then I''d want tanks and planes and invasions from the neighboring towns. But if I play an RTS, I don''t want the building phase to end. Is this just me? The little empire-building aspect in an RTS has been quite popular so far. Why is this? (I''ll go back to hiding the bodies while I wait for an answer... ) -------------------- Just waiting for the mothership...

I have the same feeling... in fact when I''m playing a multi-player game on my network, I have to remind myself to attack Otherwise my friend (Chris) does me in...

I think that Paul C. and I were writing about micromanagement (MM) in RTSs and how to get away from that... maybe if you took into account the area that a side has or how many buildings etc... that it would allow for longer build ups... then again you don''t want the build up period to last all night!

In my experience, when the first battle is started the game is on a slide to the end. Maybe it''s just the way Chris plays (he usually beats me, I can win against the comp or most anyone else but when he and I play... I''m whoooped!) but, if there were something in game that would make it desirable to rebuild then you could continue the game longer, just as you have wished.

I think that RTSs as a whole need to be revamped. I haven''t played for about 4 months now (AoE2 was the last). I have been playing and enjoying RTSs since C&C but, they all seem to be more of the same.


Dave "Dak Lozar" Loeser

Perhaps that it would be good to be able to choose the game genre ingame. Le me explain, for a while you do building like in a rts beginning or sim-city like, then you switch to real rts, with the possibility to take control of some of your units for a quick fps, maybe after you could build astroports and start a space colonization. You could then control one of your spaceships... and so on.

Granted, this would be huge. But it could allow the player to play the way he wants at the moment.

What would you think of such a game ?

I''d love to see something like this, and yes, it''d be huge, but cool too. But how would you do multiplayer? What if I''m building a space colony & you''re building a war machine? Would this work?

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Just waiting for the mothership...

Man, in Warcraft 1, I actually mapped out a city I would want to build on graph paper, and then, I beat the orcs silly, leaving them very little. Then I would build this gigantic base, with homes for every unit, and at least one of everything. You are not the only sick person out there.

Also, you have to watch out about those multiple-genre games, as they can get crap really easy.

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"What's the story with your face, son?!?"

If you like that then how about once you finish a mission an build up troops then you used the same buildings but a few fewer units in your next battle, would that be appropriate?

- Just a random thought -

Dæmin
(Dominik Grabiec)
sdgrab@eisa.net.au

Once, just once, I''d like to see a bit of diplomacy, rather than total annihilation.
And things like the Scotts meeting the Irish on the battlefield and both turning against the English (in Braveheart).
Or what about beating the crap out of you enemy in a little fight, then sending a messenger to the enemy base to ask for surrender ? And the enemy could say "yes" !

mmmh, one day, that will be done