My favorite tactics in Emperor: Battle for Dune; saturating choke point with Kindjals and snipers. The only things worry me are Harkonnen Inkvine Catapult, Ordos Kobras, and Ordos mortar teams, since they outrange Kindjal and are very lethal to infantry.

I grew up playing both and at the time they were great. Dune 2 rocked my world when it came out to be honest and the C&C series up to RA2 were fun to play. Warcraft and Warcraft 2 were fun to play head to head with the guys in the office at lunch sometimes (yea I am old). StarCraft was fun but by then I was more into Age of Empires series of games (AOE, RoR, AOK, AOC).

Blizzard is dead to me because they took out single player mode in Diablo 3 and you need to be online to play StarCraft 2.

RTS kind of died when they moved to real 3D, the engine and hardware limitations just changed the gameplay too much (same with DOOM 3 in FPS, nothing like the crazy room full of 2d sprites like in DOOM 2). To this day I still play Age of Empres 2 Conquerors on Voobly.com where 8 players with 200 units each can play with no lag on older hardware (they even patched the game so that you can do 1080P rez). Try doing 1600 units in real 3d on any hardware today.

Unknown_K wrote:

I grew up playing both and at the time they were great. Dune 2 rocked my world when it came out to be honest and the C&C series up to RA2 were fun to play. Warcraft and Warcraft 2 were fun to play head to head with the guys in the office at lunch sometimes (yea I am old). StarCraft was fun but by then I was more into Age of Empires series of games (AOE, RoR, AOK, AOC).

Blizzard is dead to me because they took out single player mode in Diablo 3 and you need to be online to play StarCraft 2.

RTS kind of died when they moved to real 3D, the engine and hardware limitations just changed the gameplay too much (same with DOOM 3 in FPS, nothing like the crazy room full of 2d sprites like in DOOM 2). To this day I still play Age of Empres 2 Conquerors on Voobly.com where 8 players with 200 units each can play with no lag on older hardware (they even patched the game so that you can do 1080P rez). Try doing 1600 units in real 3d on any hardware today.

I have to wonder if its also to some extent, a lack of competition . When Westwood and Blizzard were competing , they were trying to outdo each other , both were similarly sized with very popular products.
fast forward and without Westwood, there is no huge competition to Blizzard in these areas, the EA C&C games mostly flopped (with some good reasons), and GPG's RTS games would never get anywhere near the sales of a Starcraft 2. The same with Diablo III , Torchlight and Dungeon Siege are good but again , due to brand recognition and such , are tiny in comparison to Diablo III.

not to mention , WoW being a centrepiece for them.

Petroglyph (former Westwood) has also put out a number of RTS games that obviously play with various C&C mechanics. None have been exactly what I would call exceptional. Grey Goo is the most recent and it will make you think of C&C and Starcraft.

Unknown_K wrote:

I grew up playing both and at the time they were great. Dune 2 rocked my world when it came out to be honest and the C&C series up to RA2 were fun to play. Warcraft and Warcraft 2 were fun to play head to head with the guys in the office at lunch sometimes (yea I am old). StarCraft was fun but by then I was more into Age of Empires series of games (AOE, RoR, AOK, AOC).

Blizzard is dead to me because they took out single player mode in Diablo 3 and you need to be online to play StarCraft 2.

RTS kind of died when they moved to real 3D, the engine and hardware limitations just changed the gameplay too much (same with DOOM 3 in FPS, nothing like the crazy room full of 2d sprites like in DOOM 2). To this day I still play Age of Empres 2 Conquerors on Voobly.com where 8 players with 200 units each can play with no lag on older hardware (they even patched the game so that you can do 1080P rez). Try doing 1600 units in real 3d on any hardware today.

Not on old hardware, but my laptop does 3k units in supreme commander w/o flinching 😜 I don't really think 3D caused the downfall - Starcraft II and Command & Conquer 3 look REALLY GOOD - I think it's the consumer's lack of interest. People would rather shoot / stab / frag rather then build / manage / conquer witch saddens me greatly.

I still remember when I discovered Dune 2 - I was AMAZED. I played that game for a year (at least) non stop. I liked warcraft (1) but I was fanatical about dune II. Given the choice, 10yo me preferred dune 2 over doom 2.

Ever play the first Dune game? It has some simplistic RTS elements.

swaaye wrote:

Ever play the first Dune game? It has some simplistic RTS elements.

A friend of mine played it a lot and keeps replaying it from time to time. Last time was maybe a month ago using Dosbox, but we have been discussing about the possibilities of me building a Pentium 1 (or perhaps a Slot 1) ATX rig with a real ISA sound card (probably gonna be putting a SB 16 of some sorts in there) just so he can experience the difference.

I find it kinda amusing that he has been using Dosbox for years, but never posts here and I have been posting here for years, but never use Dosbox 🤣

I did not really like Warcraft 1, 2 or 3 that much but I did like Starcraft and I do think Starcraft 2 is fine even if it isnt better than the first.

I do like all early Westwood RTS games but their later efforts are not as good.

swaaye wrote:

Ever play the first Dune game? It has some simplistic RTS elements.

Never played it but I've been planning to.

Okay, I admit it; despite the praises it received, I skipped Total Annihilation the first time it came around.

Two days ago I decided to give it a try. I've been playing ARM campaign, and just finished the second mission last night, and got bored. To be fair, that's just the first two missions of the game, but I failed to see why the game is praised a lot. The first campaign is basically about selecting and dragging your forces to the crater around the north, while the second mission gets you to build your base and army for the first time. The commander aside, you got three types of robots: infantry, rocket, and artillery, and you are supposed to destroy enemy base with those. Well based on my experience, infantry bots and rocket bots are basically cannon fodder, while artillery could take enemy with relative impunity due to their long-range, and it's pretty boring to play with those three types of robots. Should I proceed with the campaign? Is it worth my time? After which mission will I start enjoying the game?

The only RTS games I ever enjoyed was Battlezone 1&2, Dark Reign 2, Warzone 2100, and Earth 2150 (and the older 2140).

WZ2100 and Earth 2150 in particular because of the whole unit customization thing going on in both games, a bit basic but still it's better than being limited to hardcoded unit types.

Battlezone 1 because it was essentially C&C Red Alert in space, and the combined FPS action sold me. Battlezone 2 was slightly off but still very much enjoyable when you get over the differences, the asymmetric warfare introduced into the game I honestly thought was a welcome edition.

Dark Reign 2, I liked it because not only did it run on the same engine as Battlezone 2, but it was a very straightforward and familiar style RTS to me. Build base buildings, research and unlock the tech tree, harvest resources, and build up a massive attack force. The interesting thing about Dark Reign 2 though, is that Construction Rig's have to "sacrifice" themselves to build the larger buildings, where as smaller ones are built "traditionally" without sacrificing the unit in the process.

I could never stand C&C or Dune II. They're good games but the style of gameplay particularly how bases are constructed just rubbed me off the wrong way. I never played the Warcraft series but Star Craft seemed to have really lame strategy to it, atleast from all the multiplayer games I played. Only thing that kept me playing Star Craft 1 was all the custom scenarios people hacked together on Battle.net

Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman wrote:

Okay, I admit it; despite the praises it received, I skipped Total Annihilation the first time it came around.

Two days ago I decided to give it a try. I've been playing ARM campaign, and just finished the second mission last night, and got bored. To be fair, that's just the first two missions of the game, but I failed to see why the game is praised a lot. The first campaign is basically about selecting and dragging your forces to the crater around the north, while the second mission gets you to build your base and army for the first time. The commander aside, you got three types of robots: infantry, rocket, and artillery, and you are supposed to destroy enemy base with those. Well based on my experience, infantry bots and rocket bots are basically cannon fodder, while artillery could take enemy with relative impunity due to their long-range, and it's pretty boring to play with those three types of robots. Should I proceed with the campaign? Is it worth my time? After which mission will I start enjoying the game?

Frankly, it wasn't the campaign that makes the game so good.

You should give skirmish a chance, though the AI's are kinda stupid (so I either mostly played maps with fewer obstacles or tweaked the AI to build more kbots, ships, hovers and kbots, depending on the map itself), they weren't even particularly good compared to other games that came out at the same time. There are also many mods available, some even adding tier 3 and 4 😁

But what made TA so good was it's ease of moddability, even the AI got modded (switech-ai...something? But theres more out there) and there are so many multiplayer maps out there you would be busy for weeks (if not months) if you ever wanted to try them out.
I've played that game so much back then (up to only a few years ago) I ended up with an install of over 10GB, most of which are maps. I actually found this custom mappack I once made and I was busy for weeks picking out only the maps that were at least not crappy. I even added 1 or 2 of my own maps to the pack.

edit:
You have very few options at the start of the campaign, but more will get unlocked as you progress through the game. I think they did it this was as the campaign is kinda just the tutorial.
You don't have any locked units playing skirmish, iirc there was 150 different ones not counting CC?
And mods add a lot of other ones, but I'd (again) recommend installing a more finished mod for that (for instance Mayhem or so).

I see. Thanks, Tetrium.

Well so far I've been very bored with infantry, rocket, and artillery robots. It's different than, say, Emperor: Battle for Dune, where Kindjals and Snipers are vastly different with each other, yet complement each other nicely. In Total Annihilation, it's like throwing a bunch of generic units that are not really difference with each other. I have much more fun playing Warlords Battlecry II than Total Annihilation.

What are your favorite unit combos in TA, by the way?

Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman wrote:

I see. Thanks, Tetrium.

Well so far I've been very bored with infantry, rocket, and artillery robots. It's different than, say, Emperor: Battle for Dune, where Kindjals and Snipers are vastly different with each other, yet complement each other nicely. In Total Annihilation, it's like throwing a bunch of generic units that are not really difference with each other. I have much more fun playing Warlords Battlecry II than Total Annihilation.

What are your favorite unit combos in TA, by the way?

No problem 😀

In OTA (Original TA...that's what we called the unmodified game) for me it was all about flash tanks of course 😁 Flash tanks and perhaps peewees.
And in late game I was more into either LRPC (Bertha(ARM) or Timmy/Intimidator(CORE)) or nukes combines with (cheap) air for scouting (I added hotkeys to all my nuke silos) and then had a few factories build cheap scouts that automatically patrolled a certain route, then follow them till the large blobs get spotted...that's where I would throw my nukes 😁

For wrapping up I usually build large numbers of Brawlers (ARM gunships) or just tons of stealth fighters as those were too hard for enemy air defenses to shoot down (and I mean 100+ of em 😁).

The TA soundtrack is also amazing though, by non other that Jeremy Soule

I don't know about new stuff, haven't played, but I prefer old school westwood over old school blizzard, I'll take dune2 over warcraft.

Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman wrote:

I see. Thanks, Tetrium.

Well so far I've been very bored with infantry, rocket, and artillery robots. It's different than, say, Emperor: Battle for Dune, where Kindjals and Snipers are vastly different with each other, yet complement each other nicely. In Total Annihilation, it's like throwing a bunch of generic units that are not really difference with each other. I have much more fun playing Warlords Battlecry II than Total Annihilation.

What are your favorite unit combos in TA, by the way?

Tier 1 units in TA are indeed kind of run of the mill. Later are allowed to build stuff like long-range defense lasers and artillery that can shoot all the way to your opponent's base. Units are kick-ass too. Start a skirmish game and build all possible units and buildings. What made TA great is UNIT DIVERSITY. T2 stuff is kick ass. Supreme commander does it even better by adding T3 units and shields - problem is this makes T1 units kind of pointless.

kanecvr wrote:

Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman wrote:

I see. Thanks, Tetrium.

Well so far I've been very bored with infantry, rocket, and artillery robots. It's different than, say, Emperor: Battle for Dune, where Kindjals and Snipers are vastly different with each other, yet complement each other nicely. In Total Annihilation, it's like throwing a bunch of generic units that are not really difference with each other. I have much more fun playing Warlords Battlecry II than Total Annihilation.

What are your favorite unit combos in TA, by the way?

Tier 1 units in TA are indeed kind of run of the mill. Later are allowed to build stuff like long-range defense lasers and artillery that can shoot all the way to your opponent's base. Units are kick-ass too. Start a skirmish game and build all possible units and buildings. What made TA great is UNIT DIVERSITY. T2 stuff is kick ass. Supreme commander does it even better by adding T3 units and shields - problem is this makes T1 units kind of pointless.

This is kinda true though.

I know Total Mayhem added a tier 3 and I even added a somewhat customized game to include even tier 4, it's fantastic! 😁

The thing is that it's so easy to mod and theres such a gigantic amount of stuff available, it's amazing!

And anyone who sais they are a true fan of TA must know about TAU and if you don't then I'm gonna be forced to use you as ammo for my next bertha shot 😜

Westwood implements rock-paper-scissors with vehicle and infantry. Infantry is generally weaker, but you can amass more infantry --hence more firepower-- in the same amount of space. There are weapons that are more effective against infantry, and those more effective against vehicle. Tank has strong armor and firepower against vehicle, but try killing infantry with tank cannons and you're in trouble.

Blizzard's rock-paper-scissor model is implemented with melee and ranged units. Footmen are basically meat shield for Archers, etcetera.

Where does Total Annihilation stand? Is it more like Blizzard or Westwood? From such little experience I had, it feels more like Blizzard, where infantry bots and rocket bots acting as meat shield for artillery bots, but correct me if I'm wrong.

In TA, everything has it's use...or at least that was their intent. And it's sorta true, even fleas are very handy as cannon fodder or distracting an enemy army (they keep on attacking the endless stream of fleas instead of advancing to your base) or scouting.

There are some units that are better than others, but this is mostly because Cavedog went bankrupt so no more official patches. This has been addressed by unofficial mods though.

Tetrium wrote:

In TA, everything has it's use...or at least that was their intent. And it's sorta true, even fleas are very handy as cannon fodder or distracting an enemy army (they keep on attacking the endless stream of fleas instead of advancing to your base) or scouting.

There are some units that are better than others, but this is mostly because Cavedog went bankrupt so no more official patches. This has been addressed by unofficial mods though.

I see.

I just wonder if my patience would pay off. I mean, Warlords Battlecry II doesn't take long to drag me into its gameplay. I hope TA would be exciting eventually.