What single player RTS campaign are you playing?

[Sload Soap]

On the last GDI mission in Command & Conquer 3. It's been mostly okay but like with Red Alert 3, tank rushing is still the most effective method of victory. I dunno, I found any RTS after Dawn of War to be a bit limited really (not that I've played many).

The Scrin are super annoying. Seriously.

[MrPopo]

RTS balancing is hard to pull off. The best I've seen is where some mass of 1-3 units is good at one tech level, then a different mass of 1-3 units is good at the next tech level. Trying to make everything viable ends up having everything feel samey.

[Sload Soap]

I agree but it just feels like every GDI campaign since 1995 is won the same way: ten mammoth tanks rolling over everything. That's all the last four missions were. I even tried to be clever, tried to use some of the newer units for hit and run strikes or a strategic bombing here and there. Pointless. Ten mammoth tanks with railgun upgrade=game over.

I felt Generals had a bit more variety in playstyle even if it was just the difference between the USA/China/Terrorist factions. I'd say Tiberium Wars and Red Alert 3 are both regressions from Generals so far at least. Let's see what NOD offers me.

[MrPopo]

Finally working my way towards a finish of the GDI campaign of Tiberian Sun. Man, this game makes me sad; there's so much lost potential. The original C&C and Red Alert were great, Red Alert 2 was great, but Tib Sun is so very meh. The units are not satisfying to use (except non-multiplayer artillery; that shit's awesome) and the cutscenes suck. It's like they had ideas of how to have production values in the cutscenes but fall over completely in the execution. I think removing the player as the commander and using actors as the commander is part of why they suffer. And you have to kill EVERY enemy unit in the missions, which includes all the laser fence posts if you're playing GDI. Absurdly tedious.

But this, Firestorm, and Zero Hour are the only C&C games I still haven't finished, so I am going to soldier through. Though I might take a break between vanilla and Firestorm to play Red Alert 2 and get some nice hammy acting to refresh myself.

Edit: I will admit, the Nod campaign has some real gems in the cutscenes, but they don't make up for the rest. I just binged the Nod cinematics (I beat the Nod campaign a decade ago) and the flow is terrible. The worst is when you finish a mission successfully and then the cutscene is "lol you're captured!"

"In the name of Kane!"
"Kane lives in death!"
"In the NAME OF KANE!"
"Kane lives in-"
"KANE LIVES!!!"

"The probability of a favorable outcome can be increased if you return to your main base and engage them as we move."
"Define favorable outcome CABAL."
"They all die."

[ExedExes]

I agree but it just feels like every GDI campaign since 1995 is won the same way: ten mammoth tanks rolling over everything.

I just looked back at when we played the first C&C in 2012 for Together Retro; on GDI Mission 11 (where you have to find Delphi) --

Minimal structure building and about 10-15 medium tanks to storm their base with. ~ ExedExes quote from the C&C TR thread

That was what I did to complete that mission. Of course I used medium tanks. Dang you may be right. An occasional airstrike or two also, I'm sure.

I found the funny pic I posted doing the last NOD mission back then --



A few angry GDI Chinooks after I used a nuclear strike.

[MrPopo]

Oh yeah, enough tanks solves everything in C&C land.

[MrPopo]

Just finished the Atreides campaign of Dune 2000. It's very apparent that the only thing changed from the original Dune II is that it now runs on the Red Alert engine and doesn't have a unit cap anymore (original was 25 unit cap). Unfortunately, the actual gameplay ended up being very samey between the various missions. I'm not sure I actually want to play the other two campaigns; I might just watch the briefing cutscenes online.

The big issue is that, like Warcraft 2, all the sides are nearly identical. The differences are in their end game units, their main tanks (Harkonnen slower and heavier armored, Ordos faster and lighter armored), and a couple of instances of a side not having a particular unit. This would be fine if the level design was interesting, but unlike Warcraft 2 the mission maps are pretty boring. Most of the missions are "build a base and wipe out the enemy" on a map that doesn't really have any interesting terrain. A couple are "wipe out the enemy while protecting/capturing this one building". And a couple are "just bank X credits". The last couple missions were a bit more interesting as you had to care about your base building due to pitting multiple armies against you that keep sending units at you from multiple directions, but overall I feel like I've seen everything the game has to offer.

C&C: Tiberian Dawn takes the foundation that was laid in Dune II and unmirrors the sides and adds in more interesting missions. Dune 2000 is a modernly playable version of the genre's codifier.

[BoringSupreez]

I agree but it just feels like every GDI campaign since 1995 is won the same way: ten mammoth tanks rolling over everything. That's all the last four missions were. I even tried to be clever, tried to use some of the newer units for hit and run strikes or a strategic bombing here and there. Pointless. Ten mammoth tanks with railgun upgrade=game over.

I felt Generals had a bit more variety in playstyle even if it was just the difference between the USA/China/Terrorist factions. I'd say Tiberium Wars and Red Alert 3 are both regressions from Generals so far at least. Let's see what NOD offers me.

The differences in air power and stealth units really forced the variety in Generals, in a good way, IMO. There was no way to play the GLA and the US using the same strategy. General Alexis was too overpowered though.

Right now I'm playing Wings of Liberty. I got it for $10 on black friday, and boy, it's the best RTS I've played in years. That weird Terran space redneck vibe really can't compare to anything. Makes me wish I'd picked up Heart of the Swarm while I was at it.

[MrPopo]

Technically only the Geoscape is real time, but I don't feel like making a new thread for what will probably be a few posts, so as I mentioned in Games Beaten 2015 I've started a Terror From the Deep playthrough.

I've got my first base in Hawaii and initially things started off good. I downed a sub or two and was able to sweep the remains without casualties. But as anyone who has played the old X-COM games knows, the good times would not last. I had to do my first terror mission at night time. Now, something I've noticed about TFTD is that the aliens are not as gung-ho about murdering civilians as they are in UFO Defense. What this translates into is that there will be one or two terrorists left behind some nook or cranny that you need to try and ferret out, and since he's basically just sitting there he reacts on the first Aquanaut to come into the line of fire and blasts him. Also, TFTD terror missions are harder for other reasons. The first is that they are surface missions, which means that only the Heavy Cannon equivalent works; the Auto Cannon and Missile Launcher equivalents do not work, which turns my Tank equivalent into a glorified scout. The second is that darkness has a much bigger effect on the surface missions than it has on the ocean missions, so there's a lot of fire coming from blind areas.

Needless to say, the terror mission decimated my squad. But I soldiered on. Once I got the first armor upgrade (which takes more research than UFO Defense) my squad stopped dying when the enemy sneezed. The biggest problem I'm running into now is the fact that it takes a very long time to get an upgrade for your subs, so I end up not being able to intercept a lot of enemy subs due to the base ones being too slow. This has hurt my rating with the world. I've also skipped all of the cruise ship terror missions; my guys get there and I immediately dust off because those seem like they will be utter hell until I get the heavy armor (especially since it's two maps back to back).

Also, unlike UFO Defense you can't get early game Psionic power; the enemy that unlocks the Amp device doesn't spawn until later game. You can do the prerequisites to get the Lab so you can start testing your soldiers, which I got after my first terror mission (stunned a couple aliens).

Right now I've got either one or two alien bases known on the world map; the reason I say one or two is that there were definitely two, but my last save is a couple months before when I stopped playing. I had reached a point where I decided to do some exploratory play and managed to mess myself up pretty bad, which culminated in an Alien Artifact Site mission (think the first level of the finale of UFO Defense) and my squad got utterly decimated; no one came home from that and at that point I said "ok, time to restart".

Oh, another thing about this game is the aliens have figured out how to use grenades and are not shy about doing so.

[MrPopo]

So I've been playing the original Dungeon Keeper, though I think I'm going to put it on the back burner and do something like a level a night. This isn't really a game you can sit down and plow through like you can with Quake or StarCraft. It definitely shows that it's made by the same people who did Populous, though it manages to have much more going on to make things interesting. I haven't played Populous myself, but my understanding is you basically get a huge area of flat land and hurl some spells at the enemy; since your worshippers are entirely automated you don't have a lot of influence on what they do.

Dungeon Keeper keeps the automation but gives you a ton more control. You gain the ability to directly pick up and move your creatures to wherever you want them. They still have an AI (most noticeable with your worker imps) but it doesn't take long to figure out how the AI triggers work so you can get things done. But the bigger thing it has over Populous is that there's a full management sim going on. You have various room types for your dungeon that attracts different kinds of monsters and serve different functions. You have a few basic logistical rooms and then you have things like the library to tech up and the training room to level your creatures. How much space you allocate for these is part of the decision making you need to do. There's also a lot going on with the economy, as your only resource is gold. This is used to create imps (cost based on number you already have), engage in training, put down rooms, pay your creatures, and cast your spells. There is a limited amount of gold on the map so there is a definite need to be mindful of how you're spending.

Unfortunately there doesn't feel like there's enough depth to the game. In each map you start off by building up your dungeon and then you assault the enemy at your leisure. You have enough tools to be able to decide when it's time to fight and your spells do a lot to tip things in your favor. The main way you can screw yourself is to dig too greedily early on and open things up to the enemy before you're ready. Even then you can usually get by with your magic, as the enemy AI isn't aggressive enough to keep you on the back foot. At the same time the maps take a while due to the various gimmicks they have. It's a neat game, but I'm at level 10 and already I'm glad it only has 20 levels.