r/RealTimeStrategy

2006 is clearly the peak of classic style infantry focused rts games holy shit.

In all my time playing rts games I didnt know this year would be the best we ever got for this niche.

I've played hundreds of rts games, and to this day struggle to find anything that did infantry justice like these games. With the exceptions being company of heroes 2 & 3, and Original war as runners up, these 4 games are miles better at this playstyle than all others.

Good thing is, some of them go for pretty cheap nowadays. Check them out!

Greetings,

It's been a while but I spent some time recently doing a graphical update to my RTS Last Stand Scenario "Conflict 3049".

The vegetation has been changed as has the environmental graphics.

The shaders have been updated.

The explosions have been tweaked.

The game is available on itch io for a low price at the following link: https://matty77.itch.io/conflict-3049

Enjoy!

from Matt

Mech Platoon is one of those games where the texture is so rough, so crunchy, so hard to enjoy, yet the fact that it exists at all is merit enough. Similar perhaps to how impressive the Starcraft port on N64 is, the fact that we have a fully fledged RTS experience on the GBA is a work of wizardry.

Several times over the past decade I've tried to pick up Mech Platoon, to see what it had to offer. Each time I bounced off just a few campaign missions in. Usually due to my own incompetence, struggling to juggle the mission requirements and the awkward control scheme. This final successful playthrough was fueled by my more recent endeavors in playing more RTS games as a whole, between the Age of series, Dawn of War series, and Total War: Warhammer, I felt more equipped with a better mindset to tackle Mech Platoon.

I am still baffled by the variation of units the game has which is about 36 unique units. That's a decent amount of variation on different stat spreads & damage types to experiment with.

Some interesting gameplay quirks I discovered during my playthrough. All ranged attacks are handled similarly to maybe how Age of Empires II handled arrows and siege shots. Where they actually have travel time and either land or missed based on a map-tile system, checking if a unit is on that tile when it lands. Meaning your units with fast movement speed can actually actively dodge ranged attacks if your micro is decent enough. The way they made melee work under the GBA limitations is interesting, a unit that is hit by melee will have their movement action cancelled. So if you're trying to retreat a slower unit and they are hit by a melee attack, they essentially get stun-locked and issuing new movement commands will only lead to them being hit again and stuck. It was neat seeing them intentionally have melee be able to "tie-up" ranged units like in other RTS.

Unit pathing is abysmal and maybe my only true gripe with the game? I had to micro individual movement so much because of how easy it is for workers & units to get stuck on every possible thing in their path.

EDIT: Oh my god, I found in the system menu there is a setting to set unit commands from "Renew" to "Continue". Renew meaning every time you issue commands to a unit/group it automatically deselects them after. Continue keeps the unit/group selected letting you issue multiple commands for micro. I played the entire game not knowing about this feature lmaoooo

The campaign was fun for what it was, the mission variation was nice even though they felt sort of restrictive and never let you do normal RTS game things like focusing on tech upgrades. You usually just macro out units if possible and can handle whatever the objective is. Having to salvage parts from fights during missions added some extra unneeded stress to unlock more units.

After getting 100% on my unit database for use in Skirmish/Multiplayer I had to go try out a Skirmish against the CPU. Finally a normal paced match where I can explore unit upgrades a bit more and try out some composition strategies. The way they leverage the CPU similar to how some RTS games give the CPU a resource or production advantage, Mech Platoon handles this by giving the CPU a natural start next to resources while your workers are forced to start somewhat away from your natural resource points. A weird way to handle it but sure. On my first attempt, the CPU actually two-factory rushed me with fast units and it got a good chuckle out of me. On my second attempt I went into unit production much quicker and beat the rush out, leaving their workers vulnerable to attack, which also caused the CPU to break and essentially give-up. I might use the mode to test some unit things out but as you'd expect the CPU is fairly manipulatable in this mode. One neat thing with skirmish is that even on the same maps, the resource points are randomized each time to keep things different which I thought was a nice touch.

It is tantalizing thinking about what deranged strategies could come from two humans trying to play this game against each other. I'd really like to explore the multiplayer and see what is possible, what units are good, what strategies emerge, but alas finding people willing to engage with this game earnestly, let alone for multiplayer is a large ask.

It might be a fun future personal project to try and recreate Mech Platoon in Godot and give it some much needed love like redrawn sprites and better unit pathing.

The most mods, the most campaigns, massive catalog of maps, and many many playstyles.

The whole narrative focus in campaigns was icing on the top, it didnt even need that to dunk on all coh or coh similar games. Yes i know dow is great, but the bulk of dow strength is the skirmish. Still a distant second when it comes to the hours of potential. Coh 1 is good at EVERYTHING.

Dawn of war relies on faction uniqueness. Base defenses are a little bit simpler, and maps are less dynamic in that you can interact with the environment marginally less.

I believe the definitive edition covers all it's bases. Imagine if it had full servers and more content. Damn. Just when we thought it's graphics were showing it's age lmao.

Haven't played 3, it looks great and on my bucket list. 2 was good, lots of skirmish playstyles, but seemed lacking for offline depth.

All I would say is that if I could raise the population cap, enhanced zoom, and full map basebuilding it would be insane. As is, it is a tight micro intensive rts that needs nothing. It has everything, but the niche player's complaint.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3384540/Spirit_of_the_Dome/

Comment down your thoughts about this game

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It would be hilarious to spend all those years training for the UEF, being warned about Aeon's propaganda and just surrender to the first Aeon Commander you meet.

A special cinematic with the enraged President, smug Min and Princess Rhianne would be worth it.

P.s I just like Aeons, so leaving UEF with nothing would be satisfying. A third mission with >!the Princess!< was even more obvious for this set up.

Check our Steam news post for all the details. 🙂

There are several communities of old games that are alive and can offer improvements, sometimes necessary ( widescreen, windows compatibility or servers ) and new content, whether they are revival, remaster or campaign extensions, but they are not on steam and therefore often little known.

Here are a few, don’t hesitate to share what you know.

Command & Conquer

CNCNET : The classic versions of Red alert 1/2, C&C, Tiberian sun, Yuri's revenge, Dune 2000
Very populated, offer the original experience.

OPENRA : Red alert, C&C, Dune 2000
Lot of QoL for modern expectations

Dawn of War II

Elite Mod : Multiplayer mod, adding new factions, units, maps

Tzar: The burdern of the crown

Tzared: Classic experience for skirmish/multiplayer, playable directly in web browsers

Battleforge

Skylord Reborn: Revival battleforge, campaign, skirmish, multiplayer

Battle for Middle Earth II

Age of the ring : Single & multiplayer content for BFME

Age of empires online

Project celeste: Revival project of Age of empires online singleplayer + multiplayer, new civilizations

Worth mentioning:

Warcraft III

Hive: Thousand of mods for warcraft 3, new campaign, new game mode, new race