Login

r/RealTimeStrategy

▲ 78 r/RealTimeStrategy

It really felt like RTS was a massive, mainstream genre back in the day. What exactly happened?

I had a bit of a nostalgia overload a few days ago, digging through my old video game boxes from the 90s and early 2000s. I couldn’t believe how many RTS games I had. And I don’t think it was just me being a big fan of the genre, it felt like everyone was playing these back then.

And I mean everyone. Command and Conquer, Age of Empires, StarCraft, Warcraft, these weren't cult titles you whispered about to fellow strategy nerds, they were the games your whole class played. They were almost as popular as the shooters back then, and the guaranteed pick at any LAN party (we especially liked playing weird custom maps in warcraft 3). I have very fond memories of crushing my friends in Red Alert. I had this stupid strat of rushing a dog and placing it at my friends barracks, he would get so angry hahahah. Even my mom knew the names of some of the games, which sounds ridiculous right now when the genre is considered kind of niche.

At some point the popularity of the genre sharply declined, I’m not sure why exactly. The community is still there (albeit much smaller) but very much out of the mainstream. We even have some really cool relatively recent games, and even subgenres evolving. Like the fortress defense stuff, my favorite being Diplomacy is Not an Option, which even has a nice long campaign that really reminds me of the golden age of the genre. But the releases are definitely few and far between nowadays, and they don’t get as much attention.

And it's weird because it didn’t happen to all the old school genres. The best example is ARPGs, they are still really relevant. New ones are announced all the time and we have a few of the live service heavy hitters pretty much everyone knows about going strong. I just discovered The Dark West a few days ago, a western themed singleplayer ARPG, like how oldschool does that sound lol? And people are hyped for it (including myself). While almost all of the old school RTS franchises have been shut down, we still have a new Diablo game every few years.

I have some suspicions about what happened. Obviously MOBAs played a part, they basically grew out of a Warcraft 3 mod and then ate an entire generation of the playerbase that might otherwise have been buying RTS games. I also think devs were leaning hard into brutal high APM competitive esports and leaving the fun, long single player campaigns that pulled most of us in as an afterthought, they treated them as a tutorial for the pvp. A part of it was probably economics too, nobody ever figured out a way to cram a battlepass into an RTS game well, and those are where a lot of the companies make most of their money now.

Whatever actually happened we have to deal with it now. Anyway, I’m glad there’s a nice community keeping the flame alive. Part of me still hopes the genre claws its way back one day.

reddit.com
u/Emmyy_Beans — 1 day ago
▲ 660 r/RealTimeStrategy+2 crossposts

Adding Complex Trench Systems to my isometric RTS game

Hey guys! Back with another update. Trench systems have been something I wanted to do right from the beginning of the game's development, and I'm looking to really improve them a lot over time!

Trenches protect troops from tank shells, RPGs, Grad rockets and FPV drone strikes. You can see an FPV drone hitting my unit inside the trench. The camo netting protects troops from FPV drones, if you were wondering :) Oh, and I added a snow terrain — let me know what you guys think! I love reading your feedback!

As always, for more regular dev updates you can check out the YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@Rbuhrgames

u/RBGames777 — 1 day ago
▲ 203 r/RealTimeStrategy+1 crossposts

Sanctuary : Shattered Sun (Classic RTS) - last chance to back - 825% funded

Sanctuary is an RTS set on the surface of a Dyson Sphere and features some cool new mechanics: 

🔥  SHATTER THE LAND - Split the earth with superweapons and watch your enemies plummet into radiant sunlight.

❄️  FREEZE THE SEAS - Destroy atmospheric cryotanks to snap freeze the map, immobilizing ships and allowing your tanks to cross water.

🚨   TITAN LEVEL THREAT DETECTED - Setting a new benchmark for just how big units can get in an RTS, few players will get to build a T5 Titan, and even fewer will survive fighting one.

Today is the last day for our Kickstarter and last chance to be in on the beta before Early Access.

Check it out:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/enhearten-media/sanctuary-shattered-sun

u/EnheartenMedia — 1 day ago
▲ 358 r/RealTimeStrategy+3 crossposts

We’re adding new bugs to our ant colony strategy game – which species should we include?

Hi everyone,

We’re a two-person team of biologists working on a minimalist ant colony-management strategy game called Garden of Ants, inspired in part by SimAnt.

We’re currently expanding the ecosystem by adding new insects and other small creatures that ants can encounter, hunt, avoid, compete with, or interact with.

Our goal is for these species to be more than just enemies or decoration. We’d like them to have their own roles in the ecosystem and create different strategic situations for the colony — potential prey, predators, competitors, parasites, mutualists, or sources of resources.

The game already takes place across several connected habitats, including the underground nest, garden surface, and tree canopy. Conditions also change between day and night, so we’re interested in species whose behavior could vary depending on habitat or time of day.

We’d love to hear suggestions from people here: which insects or other arthropods would you like to see in an ant colony simulation? Are there any particularly interesting ant–insect interactions that you think would work well as game mechanics?

For context, here is the Steam page:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3016940/Garden_of_Ants/

Thanks!

Tomas

u/Able-Sherbert-4447 — 1 day ago
▲ 8 r/RealTimeStrategy+2 crossposts

TA/Supreme Commander Inspired Game - FREE wasm version

I love Total Annihilation, and Supreme Commander. I made a game much like both and compiled it into web assembly language so I could play in any web browser. Would love to hear your thoughts. Tier 2 gets you shields :D Thanks and hope you get some nostolgia from this like I do.

wasm-commander.vercel.app
u/Charlie_Sierra_996 — 1 day ago
▲ 14 r/RealTimeStrategy+3 crossposts

The Old War | RTS & Base Builder Hybrid | FEEDBACK NEEDED: How do we do Co-Op Right?

Title is self explanatory. I spent probably ten or so years trying to get my friends to play co-op RTS games with me and it literally has never gone well.

It's not that they don't like the genre, I feel like most of us RTS fans find like minded people pretty quick, but the feedback I'm getting is that most of the RTS co-op games were designed to help teach someone else the game, not to have fun together. I either see clunky shared control that feels like an afterthought for the devs, or you get something like Starcraft's Archon mode: literally the exact same game, except now two people are fighting over the same units, or one person is sitting on their hands for the first ten minutes while the other plays.

I'm currently building co-op as a core feature from the ground up in The Old War to avoid all of that, but I am also starting to realize why no other studios have done this, it is a MONSTER to figure out, oh my god. I'm here to talk through what we're actually trying to do before we get too deep into it.

The problem my team is trying to solve

Most RTS co-op, in my experience, asks: "How do we let two people play the same campaign?"

I've been asking: "How do we make it so you actually care that your friend is there?"

So for context, in The Old War, you and your friend or co-op partner or whatever share a single faction. You train, upgrade, and lose a persistent army together across a long war. Every battle will either hurt or help your shared forces. If your friend loses a veteran unit you've been upgrading since the first mission, that loss is yours too. The consequences are shared, which also means the stakes are real for both of you.

What we're still figuring out

Right now the game is in a state where two people can play together, but we're working through desync issues and trying to make shared control feel smooth instead of chaotic. UI is a big question mark, how do you communicate clearly who is doing what when you're both controlling the same faction?

So here's my question to the RTS community

What actually would make co-op cooperative in an RTS for you? Is it shared resources? Divided roles? Asymmetric information? Or is it just having someone to blame when your macro slips? Anything in between? Anything and everything you can think of would be super super helpful here.

If you want to follow what we're figuring out: Wishlist on Steam, and we're going to be opening a free playtest in a few months (hopefully!) so you can try it out yourself.

u/Character-Wealth-810 — 1 day ago
▲ 64 r/RealTimeStrategy+4 crossposts

Space Tales is now in 1.0 — our retro-futuristic sci-fi RTS has left Early Access

Hey RTS fans,

I’m part of the the team at Saigon Dragon Studios share the launch of Space Tales, a retro-futuristic sci-fi RTS that has now officially reached 1.0 on Steam today.

The game is built around a story-driven single-player campaign, modular base building, resource management, defensive planning, and adapting your tactics against enemy factions that fight very differently from one another.

The 1.0 release brings the full Space Tales experience, including:

  • A full sci-fi RTS campaign following Xander Falcon through a space opera conflict shaped by family tragedy, ancient races, hostile worlds, and universe-ending threats
  • Three enemy factions with distinct combat behaviors
  • HUB-based base expansion and energy-line management
  • Replayable survival challenges
  • Colossal boss encounters where you need to study attack patterns and engage carefully
  • Capturable neutral monsters that can be summoned as battlefield allies
  • A tech tree with branching upgrades for HUBs and units

The game was in Early Access for a few months, and the studio used that time to improve balance, controls, unit behavior, localization, and the overall RTS feel based on player feedback.

Side note: the Early Access label still appears on our Steam page, but we can confirm that the playable version available today is 1.0. We are working to remove the Early Access label shortly ;)

Check out our game on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2457960/Space_Tales/

u/SDS_SpaceTales — 1 day ago
▲ 7 r/RealTimeStrategy+1 crossposts

Decimation [Action RTS] - ARPG-like hero combat with Tactical Tower Defense. Here is the Early Access trailer for the game!

Hi r/RealTimeStrategy folks!

I posted about my game here about 9 months ago when it was still in a demo state. Now it's just been launched into EA and I hoped to share about it. I wanted to build something where strategy meets active, high-stakes combat, rather than just passive tower placement. Think of it as a sci-fi tower defense where your hero acts as a mobile tactical unit directly on the battlefield. So, in a nutshell, its traditional fixed placement tower defense with a bit more to it.

Hopefully this is a combination that makes it something you'd like to play.

Influences are Starcraft (the GOAT!), Defense Grid, a bit of Kingdom Rush and a bit of Diablo.

Core Mechanics:

  • ARPG Combat: You control a hero with 4 active abilities, executing skill rotations and dodging enemy attacks while your towers hold the line. Towers alone won't save you. Your hero performance clinches the victory.
  • Roguelite Battle Effects: Elite enemies drop orbs that pause combat, letting you choose 1 of 3 randomized battle effects (from a pool of 17) to turn the tide.
  • RPG Progression: Level up your hero, spend skill points, and craft equipment modules from battle loot to upgrade both your hero and your towers.

Early Access Details:
The current build features the first 2 Acts of the campaign (8 levels - around 3.5 hours of gameplay) plus 2 Endless Challenge levels.

I'm actively looking for feedback on balance, difficulty curves, tower tuning or anything you feel like commenting on.

If this sounds like your kind of strategy game, please do check it out:

Thanks so much for your time!

u/Heavy-Language3109 — 1 day ago
▲ 9 r/RealTimeStrategy+1 crossposts

Multiplay test - Cartoon Craft(Classic RTS)

This is multiplayer test running on two separate computers.

What information would you want to see more during a 1v1 match?

u/StudioNAP — 1 day ago
▲ 11 r/RealTimeStrategy

IAH: INTERNET WAR. My game is releasing this Friday. Sweaty RTS Co-Op

Hi guys!

My game is releasing this friday and I am super pumped.

I have been posting over the years few times about the game and its finally ready. Just recently I completed a co-op for 2-10 players, and I hope that someone out there will find this sweaty RTS experience entertaining.

So, what is the idea behind here? Well, to simply put its a game where your actions trigger enemy response. It‘s a bit hardcore game as it was designed around the idea of hardship and journey through the depths of the internet.

In the video I do 2 turns, and during the second round I panic, forget I have purchased hewl, dont slow time and move entire group losing DPS. I should have won, but I did not, and the game is full of this. heh.

So, if you have some feedback based on the video feel free to leave a comment, I plan to do post release content and updates based on player feedback. For example, I added Co-Op because from the feedback that this community had. I had already some tech but I was unsure if people really play RTS PvE because of the PvP Mobas but I was surprised to find out that there are people!

Steam Page:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/304770/IAH_INTERNET_WAR/

u/Embarrassed_Guide_80 — 1 day ago
▲ 160 r/RealTimeStrategy+1 crossposts

Hello friends. Red Chaos has received a major new update, featuring new subfactions, additional content, and many improvements. To celebrate this, we’re giving away 3 Steam keys for Red Chaos. To enter, simply comment: RED CHAOS We’ll randomly pick 3 winners and contact them here and via DM

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1934720/Red_Chaos__The_Strict_Order/

Major Update - Iron Sky & GRA Volt Are Here

This update brings two new subfactions to Red Chaos, along with new units, new Specials, Save & Load, UI improvements and several fixes.

New Subfactions: Iron Sky & GRA Volt

The biggest part of this update is the introduction of two new subfactions.

Iron Sky

Iron Sky is the new subfaction for Iron Hand and focuses more on air units.

It comes with:

  • A new Airfield
  • 2 new aircraft
  • 1 new vehicle
  • 2 new Specials

GRA Volt

GRA Volt is the new subfaction for GRA and brings its own new units and playstyle.

It comes with:

  • A new defense tower
  • 1 new aircraft
  • 1 new vehicle
  • 2 new Specials

Both subfactions give you some new options to try out and make the two factions play a bit differently depending on which direction you choose.

Save & Load

You can now save and load your games in all local game modes.

 

UI Rework

We reworked a large part of the building and unit UI for both factions.

The icons inside the Guide have also been updated, so units and buildings should now be easier to recognize and the overall UI feels more consistent.

German Language

Fixes & Improvements

We also fixed several bugs that came up during our playtests and made a number of smaller improvements across the game.

As always, thanks to everyone playing Red Chaos and sending us feedback.

 

u/Red-Chaos-RTS — 3 days ago
▲ 4 r/RealTimeStrategy

Looking for feedback on RTS game idea

TL;DR: Mythology-based RTS inspired by Age of Mythology. Each civilization earns Devotion in a unique way and uses it to summon gods and mythical creatures, activate buffs, and cast powerful map-changing abilities like walking on water or passing through walls. It keeps the classic RTS economy/base-building loop, but adds infinite resources, no population cap, and mythology-based single-player campaigns. The main concern is whether these mechanics make it distinct enough from AoM.

Whole post:

Hey guys - I have an idea for an RTS game I was thinking about for the last few weeks. I was super pumped about the mechanics and brought up this idea to some of my friends. After the discussion I am still pumped but somewhat undecided if my ideas are that original. That is why I am going on the internet to get feedback from strangers.

Two issues that were brought up:

  1. RTS is sort of dead. I do not want to accept this - I grew up playing Age of Empires II and III and Warcraft III. I loved it and spent hours playing it with my friends. One leading idea online is that RTS games are too focused on PvP and not for the average casual player. It should have a strong single player story to play. This here can be achieved here easily - see section single player
  2. We were discussing that it shares a lot of similarities with Age of Mythology. That is the part I would like to discuss with you guys.

The basic idea is that each faction you can play is a civilization with a deity (greeks, scandinavians etc. In the prototype I want to have fairly narrow but deep roster of the civilizations but you can go deep with the selection of civilizations - from obscure keltic subcultures to even christians)

The base of the game would be classic-ish RTS loop - you gather resources - gold, wood, stone, food, build your base, grow the army. So far fairly similar to AoM or other RTS strategies, how would it be different?

Enter the mechanic of Devotion. This is like any other resource next to the traditional ones. It however wildly differs how each civilization acquires it. This would make each civilization play wildly differently - the scandinavians would farm it when in combat, greeks would sacrifice food (in a form of livestock that could be either harvested for food or sacrificed for the gain of devotion). So far it must sound very similar to AoM so let’s get to how it differs - mainly how devotion is spent!

Temples (or shrines, or the given civilizations equivalent)
You build temples as one of the buildings. You can build as many temples you want to and you have the resources for. Each temple when built is “vanilla”. You can devote a temple to a given god. This gives you access to summon different gods to aid you in a fight, summon lesser mythological beings and cast different blessings.

Gods
Gods are really powerful units that consume Devotion when summoned. They can really change the tide of the battle - next to being powerful they have also abilities (or miracles): These are both “conventional” ones such as lightning bolt that deal damage but also, and that is key feature, “map altering miracles” - these can be used for really unexpected strategies - like waterwalking by Posseidon where units can walk on water, moving trees, passing through walls for short period of time etc. While summoned, they slowly consume Devotion so they can be summoned for just limited amount of time. Casting of the abilities also consume devotion

Lesser mythological beings
These can be summoned from different specialized buildings of the civilization you also build - greeks can summon pegassuses, kerberoses and others, norwegians would have valkyrie and other. These would have also special abilities that would either also consume devotion or just be on cooldown. They would be normal units in a sense that they would not consume devotion while present.

Blessings
Blessings are civilization wide boost to units or buildings. It includes stuff like faster resource gathering/faster attack speed/faster movement speed, stuff like that. It can be activated and deactivated at will but consumes devotion while active.

Single player
Single player here is sort of easy - you adopt the stories of each given mythology and implement them as a campaign. Done!

Other notes regarding casual play
I have some other ideas that go toward the casual player.
- When I played the real time strategies (and also when I currently play with my gf) - we hate running out of resources. The resources will be infinite. There will be however limit on how many NPCs can gather this resource so it will always make sense to expand to other resource sources to speed up gathering. It is a similar idea with ammo in overwatch - ammo should be limited with magazine size but also infinite to not run out of it.
- There is no population cap. This might be myself shooting in the foot because I am sure pop cap is a technical limitation but I want to try. There is a huge fun in creating insanely big armies and make them fight to the death.

So what do you guys think? Is it different enough to AoM? Do you have feedback on how to make it better? Let me know!

reddit.com
u/Global_Watercress907 — 2 days ago
▲ 48 r/RealTimeStrategy

[Digiphile] RTS Renaissance ($22 for 7: Dungeons 4, Godsworn, The Scouring, Rogue Command, Stronghold Crusader: Definitive Edition, 9-Bit Armies: A Bit Too Far, From Glory To Goo. Add more for Dungeons 4-The Good, the Bad and the Evil Stronghold Crusader:Definitive Edition-The Canary & The Trader)

digiphile.co
u/spiderwebdesign — 2 days ago
▲ 35 r/RealTimeStrategy+6 crossposts

Trying to make my RTS battlefield feel like a world instead of a board

I've been spending a slightly unreasonable amount of development time lately on something that started with: "The ground needs grass."

This is Icon: Voidfall, the RTS I've been building for about three months now, and one of the things I've really wanted to improve is how much the battlefield itself reacts to what's happening on it.

So naturally, adding grass escalated.

The grass is procedurally generated across the playable NavMesh and GPU instanced rather than being placed as authored objects. It reacts to units moving through it, clears underneath structures, dies around the spreading Malignance used by the Arafel faction, responds to wind and lighting, and eventually regrows when temporary damage to the environment disappears.

Then I added Twisters.

They're neutral environmental actors that wander the NavMesh and physically affect the match. They'll tear paths through the grass, damage structures, pick up smaller units, throw larger ones around, uproot resource trees, scatter their logs, and leave temporary scars through Malignance.

Wildlife and neutral Kobolds will actually recognize one approaching and attempt to get the hell out of its way.

There's also a match mutator called Tempest that turns these things loose during normal games.

And because apparently none of this had become complicated enough yet, I added fire.

Fire spreads through the grass with an intentionally irregular front, chars the ground behind it, produces smoke, can ignite units caught in its path, temporarily sets structures and trees visually ablaze, and eventually burns itself out. The grass then slowly grows back into the scar.

The fun part for me has been trying to do all of this without turning environmental simulation into the most expensive system in an RTS that's already expected to handle hundreds of units.

A lot of what you're seeing here is shader driven, bounded, pooled, or represented through compact world-space data rather than trying to simulate every individual blade of grass or particle as an object.

There are still plenty of rough edges, and fire in particular is currently offline-only while I work out the host-authoritative world-event path it needs for multiplayer.

But this is getting much closer to what I want the world of Voidfall to feel like.

The battlefield isn't just scenery underneath the RTS anymore. It's slowly becoming another participant in the match.

Anyway, here's roughly four minutes of me abusing the environment in the name of game development.

Happy to get into the technical weeds on any of it if anyone is interested.

u/_Req — 2 days ago
▲ 19 r/RealTimeStrategy+3 crossposts

Will to War — a minimalist real-time strategy game (free, in-browser, no account)

A one-screen RTS stripped to numbers, territory, and morale. You build a supply +
materiel economy, fight for tiles, and try to break the enemy's *will* — which is
the only way to win or lose, not the army. Cutting an enemy's supply line starves
their will and strands their troops.


Free in the browser, no download or account: https://willtowar.com/
Feedback very welcome — especially on how the economy and combat feel.
willtowar.com
u/Icy-Today-7072 — 2 days ago
▲ 4 r/RealTimeStrategy

Any RTS/FPS Hybrid with one commander and other players as soldiers?

Pretty much the title. I saw posts of Natural Selection 2 and my friend has been wanting to get me into Executive Assault. Those posts were from a year ago, though, so I'm wondering if anyone might have ideas that fit the bill as well?

One player (or multiple, doesn't matter much) who does the RTS side of things for building the base and directing squads, while there are other human players on the ground assisting in assaulting the objectives and commanding their own squads?

I'm an FPS lover and my friend loves RTS, and I noticed there are some hybrid games. I'm hoping for suggestions on games that fit that bill for what we'd be looking for. Preferably with the ability to face against bots and just have us two play. We aren't big on PvP.

reddit.com
u/DarkMasterSpyro — 2 days ago