Fan of RTS but not very good. Can anyone provide some general tips?

I've been Warcraft III and almost half of my most wanted games are RTS. But I'm not as good as I want to be. Anyone have any tips on how to get better? Favorite genre can only get better when you're good at it.

- allways group your units

for example, if you have 5 melee fighters and 5 range units i usualy would select 5 melee and CTRL + 1 (assign them to group 1) and rangers to 2

Next time you want to select all melee fighters just press number 1 and they are automaticaly selected

- allways keep eye on resources

if unit cost 100 gold and you want to train it - do it immediately

- watch replays of great players and copy their build order and tricks

(some of best warcraft 3 players are grubby moon lucifer etc. )

- in most games TIME is everything

you want everything to do as fast as possible

USE HOTKEYS (for example B for barracks etc)

if unit is wounded send it back to base to heal

etc

RTS games all have their own learning curves which is what makes each one unique. Only one thing I can suggest: Play the campaign, then try skrimishes. Don't try to tackle multiplayer until you've FORCED yourself to learn the hotkeys and binds, it's the only way to succeed. Picture it like this: A noobie player who has to drag his mouse down to the ability button, click, and then bring the cursor back up to move the camera around takes about a second. An experienced player doing it with hotkeys will not even take a quarter of that time. Due to all the motions and actions you need to take...you can easily be a full minute behind other players if you drag your feet, meaning your base will get tackled before your main troops are even built.

The vast majority of RTS games have a great campaign with a decent but ever increasing learning curve...play that because it toughens you up over the period of missions and at the end...you will be experienced enough to learn build orders in skirmish and finally do multiplayer against some real hardasses! You can only "learn by doing" in RTS games. None of that jump in and kick ass baloney you get with FPS games.

"the shooting gallery" : this can be the most risky and rewarding tactic in the book. its as old as C&C and warcraft, heres the recipe: make several of 1 high damage cheap unit (engineers from C&C, petrards from AoE, dwarven demo squads from warcraft, etc.) into transports at random (dont fill them and not the same number in each (even good to not fill some)) rush to the enemy base and unload then cause as much damage as u can taking over structures burning buildings and wasting resource gathering the reason for the random unit spread and empty transports is less loss of units it can very often cripple and enemies ability to fight and set them back large sums of resources. the reason this is a gamble is if your transports are all destroyed before they unload it can set u back considerable resources.

rolling barrage: infantry behind a wall of armor and/or artillery fire, makes for quick crushing

early game base rushes can be a fools errand, but turtling (to sit in ones base and stock up on resources and defences) is never an answer.

Economy is everything in an RTS.

Be aggressive in seeking out resources and maintaining them while denying your opponent the ability to get those same resources. A blow to his resource rates can be more damaging than losing his entire army.

when you are getting used to RTS i would recommend turtling. turtling means building up your base and LOTS of base defenses and defensive units without going to attack the enemy. you are basically trying to make your base impregnable. then when you are rich and have all the techs etc you can build an army and wipe out your opponents at your leisure.

this works well against comp opponents as they just keep throwing waves of weak units against your uber defences.

It depends.In the older RTS games you should construct a good defence and inside your walls build up an unstoppable army.Than strike with all you force!In the newer ones it's all about offence.You should send waves of troupes at your enemies (it doesn't give them time to repair their defences).555SSOO

This is very important! Send waves of troops out at your enemies, not one big push. It's debatable, but it's believed that lots of small pains has a greater impact than one greater pain. If you take a large punch to the chest, you can recover within days. If you take a small/medium powered punch every minute for 4 days, you might pick up an injury that will take weeks to heal (crap example lol, you get the picture). Same principle in an RTS, you want to gradually erode the defensive shells of your oponent and then hit the heart. In sword fighting, a one shot deathblow is nearly impossible to make...you want to break down the oponent's defence and then hit him when you've either learnt his technique or broken down his energy reserve. RTS online is a sport of tactical exploitation...find the enemy's weakness, exploit it and repeatedly hammer at it.

Learn counters. What unit works best against another. What strategy is good to follow when your enemy follows one. Always stay busy =], do something; Scout, build, create units, attack, etc. Aside from that everyone else gave you great tips.

[QUOTE="555SSOO"]It depends.In the older RTS games you should construct a good defence and inside your walls build up an unstoppable army.Than strike with all you force!In the newer ones it's all about offence.You should send waves of troupes at your enemies (it doesn't give them time to repair their defences).Solidus171

This is very important! Send waves of troops out at your enemies, not one big push. It's debatable, but it's believed that lots of small pains has a greater impact than one greater pain. If you take a large punch to the chest, you can recover within days. If you take a small/medium powered punch every minute for 4 days, you might pick up an injury that will take weeks to heal (crap example lol, you get the picture). Same principle in an RTS, you want to gradually erode the defensive shells of your oponent and then hit the heart. In sword fighting, a one shot deathblow is nearly impossible to make...you want to break down the oponent's defence and then hit him when you've either learnt his technique or broken down his energy reserve. RTS online is a sport of tactical exploitation...find the enemy's weakness, exploit it and repeatedly hammer at it.

This is actually a pretty poor strategy, especially if the game has a veterancy feature. You will take heavy casualties for no particularly good reason and the enemy units will achieve veterancy.

What works in nearly every RTS I've played is turtling. Hide behind heavy defenses while gathering resources and climbing the tech tree so you can build the most advanced and effective units in the game. Then put together one or perhaps several, massive, well-coordinated offensives using combined arms and high level units.

The fact that this is the only strategy that works consistently well in most traditional RTS games is one of the reasons I've gotten bored with the genre.

Rushing early in the game can just as easily backfire, and leave you vulnerable and short on resources. It's not a strategy that consistently works. In fact, I would say it frequently doesn't work.

And sending in small waves of units is a bad idea. They have no hope of dealing significant damage and will just be taken out, resulting in high casualties. The exception to this would be air units, long range artillery, and commando units. You'll want to keep attacking with these while you turtle. But you shouldn't launch a major ground offensive until you can deal a decisive blow to the enemy.

Considering how broadly different some RTS games can be I guess perhaps the best thing that an RTS player can do is simply practice. Practice, practice and more practice. Don't be intimidated by whatever others do to you online and definitely don't be intimidated if you get ganked in your first few rounds online. I believe thats just the normal cycle. And when you lose a battle against a superior foe(humans preferred), save the replay, and learn from it.

Those are pretty much as general as you can get if you ask me.

Rushing early in the game can just as easily backfire, and leave you vulnerable and short on resources. It's not a strategy that consistently works. In fact, I would say it frequently doesn't work.

And sending in small waves of units is a bad idea. They have no hope of dealing significant damage and will just be taken out, resulting in high casualties. The exception to this would be air units, long range artillery, and commando units. You'll want to keep attacking with these while you turtle. But you shouldn't launch a major ground offensive until you can deal a decisive blow to the enemy.

AFraud

I did not write to send SMALL waves.