Which RTS series was the best?

No Supreme Commander? I am dissapoint TC.

Where is Age of Empires? Bad poll is bad,

supreme commander 1

best rts i have ever played.

anyone played planetary annihilation?

No, but I want to, loved Total Annihilation. The price is overkill though for an alpha (is it still alpha?)

Command and Conquer. I enjoyed the later iterations, but I miss the likes of '95 and Sun. Good times.

I think it is still pre-release. It was 90USD now I think it's 70. Still, pretty damn costly considering I got Batman so cheap the other day.

And yeah, Total Annihilation ... what a game.

feck, i don't understand why they are charging that much though, is there a reason? You can get 2 new release pc titles for that normally.

Age of Empires II, the game and it's expansion. Who gives a rat's behind about the franchise.

Total Annihilation was also incredible for it's time.

Age of Empires and Age of Mythology

Love me some historical and mythological RTS

I had a look, but I can't find any rationale for the high price.

I'm guessing they like money.

It'll come, it'll come at a reasonable price.

Not a fan of AoE 1 and 3 then? :(

And yeah, I still install TA on every new gaming pc I build for people, whether they like it or not.

Best series: Red Alert

Best single Game: Rise of Nations

Aye, until that day comes though, there are many other decent games to play :)

Is Dawn of War III still in making does anyone know?

All RTS games before and after Command and Conquer from 1995 suck

No Warcraft?

Bad poll. Also this probably belongs on the PC forum, since they are all PC exclusives.

Wonder Woman ponders.

"Hmmm, would have to say Valkyria Chronicles."

Company of Heroes.

AoE1 is a great foundation for 2. It just lacked the magic.

3 was so meh. The graphics and physics were awesome, but the focus on the home city and economy just detracted from the experience. That an the colonial age is boring... >_>

Fair cookie, I see where you're coming from.

Age 1 I found lacked a lot of balance, and games could last too long, but I loved both Age 2 and 3, I found the home city thing kept drawing me in for another game.

So if another Age of Empires game were announced (obviously Ensemble doesn't exist, but say if Robot did it), would you be interested, or just steer clear?

c&c generals and aoe2

Playing C&C: RA; Retaliation on two PS1s system linked with two massive TVs back to back is probably one of my best console gaming memories. I'll never forget allying with my mate, building a base together, then watching my Tesla coils power up as I declared war.

Where is Warcraft?

Warcraft 2 was my first ever online game using a (Kali?) or something. It was a DOS based program that tricked your PC into thinking that a dial up 33K modem was a LAN network. I played for weeks online until the £250.00 phone bill for the quarter arrived and my parents went insane.

That game is turn based.

my favorites were Relics Warhammer 40K RTS games and Homeworld games, shame we won't see them make more of those, though I heard Gearbox got the rights to Homeworld when THQ went to shit and Relic went to SEGA, so no hope of seeing the same kind of Homeworld games, but at least Sega acquired Dawn of War, so there's hope

recently though I must say I really liked R.U.S.E., I really liked the interface and it worked well on consoles, being able to zoom out and see the action from a command table or zoom in and see the action up close is really cool, the WW2 setting was okay but I'd like to see it apply to some alternate history Cold War escalate into WW3 kind of scenario, too bad it didnt' do too well commercially because this series could have been really good

this.

though if the TC combined Tiberium Wars and Red Alert into just Command and Conquer I might have to go with that.

I also have mad love for the Dawn of War series.

Where's Master of Orion or Galactic Civilizations?

Those are Turn-Based Strategy games.

For my pick I'd have to go with Warcraft. I probably spent more time playing Warcraft 3 and The Frozen Throne more than any other game.

Company of Heroes and Dawn of War are right up there as well.

starcraft.

sc1 had the story, and sc2 had good mission design, although the quality of the story is debatable. Multiplayer is losing it's touch, but its still better than most games.

CoH1 had awesome multiplayer, didn't play 2 because I heard its imbalance as hell.

Shogun 2 total war is also very fun, but I'm not sure if the series is considered RTS.

Would heavily depend on the era they chose. Dark Age to the Renaissance Europe was the best for city-building and military combat. At least in terms of interesting battles, for me.

Age of Mythology

StarCraft.

The best there is, the best there was, the best there ever will be. Had more of an impact on the genre than pretty much anything, is a better game than everything everyone else has listed in this thread (AoE II and Age of Kings comes close, props to Foxhound on that), and mops the floor with the modern day pretenders to its throne, like Company of Heroes because Relic can't design and balance multiplayer for shit.

picked starcraft though I also loved Age of Empires. Another one is Sins of a Solar Empire which is more of a 4x games, but RTS like.

You know something else that sucks ass about this site's new design. That fact that you can't see the poll results unless you vote. I can't vote because I don't play RTS and have no clue which would be the best. But I would like to pick up a good RTS to try and get into the genre and would love to see the results to this poll.

Well, StarCraft, WarCraft, Command and Conquer, and Age of Empires are all pretty great as far as traditional RTS games go.

Some of the games in this poll are RTT games, though. I don't like that.

RTT? Also, which would you say would be the easiest to learn and get into for a noob to the genre?

Real Time Tactics.

Those games are less about base and resource management and more about controlling your troops. Company of Heroes and Dawn of War are RTT games, for example.

Where is Warcraft.

Starcraft

@AmazonTreeBoa: "which would you say would be the easiest to learn and get into for a noob to the genre?"

Good question! My suggestions would be:

If you can stomach the ageing visuals Starcraft 1 is awesome, I prefer it to SC2, and it's campaign has a decent story. It's like 5 bucks. http://cdkeyprices.com/product/Starcraft-Anthology-CD-Key.html

For something more modern I suggest Supreme Commander with Forged Alliance, eventually it will have a discount on Steam. This is probably my favourite RTS of all time.

Another place to look might be gog.com, Total Annihilation is there, that's a really fantastic RTS.

I hope you find something you like.

Thanks, I will have to look into those games. No old graphics don't bother me (next game on my to play list is To the Moon). I always thought starcraft 2 looked really fun, so maybe I will pick up SC1 and learn to play, then check out SC2.

Sorry, didn't see your updated post until now.

I agree with Psymon here, and I'm also going to add Age of Empires II as well, which is also on Steam, and the WarCraft series. They're both easy to learn, and each one brings something unique to the table.

Except getting good at SC games feels like getting good at Mircosoft Excel. Its so damn generic. It also borrowed pretty heavily from early CnC games and Warhammer.

I'd take a slightly imbalanced game that has personality like Dawn of War or Company of Heroes over Starcraft any day.

Spoken like someone who really doesn't understand StarCraft.

There is no right or wrong answer in StarCraft. It's all about what you choose to do, what your opponent chooses to do, and how you react. You're not playing a "If your opponent does X, you do Y" type of game.

And it's also significantly better than Warhammer. I mean, you talk about generic...

No comment on the C&C thing, other than I don't see it. StarCraft isn't much like it. It's more akin to Dune II or WarCraft.

best CnC is IMHO Red Alert 2 Yuri Revenge, they nailed the balance with that game, fun units, balanced sides, cool SP.

below that is CnC Generals Zero Hour.

never played Starcraft, lol

then there is Warcraft, IMO warcraft 2 was better than 3

believe it or not, the best CnC clone was Act of War series, it was a very very under rated RTS, they had a good CnC like SP, a hybrid between CnC and more tactical game like WiC with the 'air support' system

historical / timeline rts were great, I missed them, Rise of Nations, Empire Earth, then the most under rated of them all Empires Dawn of the Modern World.

never played Ages of Mythologies.

Then there is Total Annihilation -never played it- and Supreme Commander, Forged Alliance was the most balanced one.

Then there is of course the most over hyped of them all Company of Heroes, which IMO bested by World in Conflict and Men of War series.

Then there were the father of Men of War and World in Conflict series that were Combat Mission series, and the one I forget the title lol.

Then there were the space RTS ones, popularized by Homeworld series, at early 2000s there were few good ones, like Star Wars Empire at War which wasn't exactly qualified as space RTS, but there were ORB, Haegemonia, etc... my most favourite was Nexus Jupiter Incident which was more like a more arcade Silent Hunter on space.

There are still plenty of them strategy games that could get categorized as RTSes, titles we little heard of... however let's go back in the 90s... there were tactical rts games like the Commandos series, Syndicate series, how I miss such games.

funny also how games like Sim City can also be considered rts too, if you went this route then there are still plenty of great titles from this genre, Settlers, Populous, Black and White, even Cleopatra series.

from the contemporary titles I'd reckon that the new Wargame series is good enough just like WiC but added with grand strategy element.

speaking about grand strategy element, real time 4x games are technically rts games too, so the likes of Sins of the Solar Empire, Endless Space, Star Ruler and some very nich indie 4x games should also be considered here.

thread like this just reminding me how much I hate consoles, how they made such a beautiful and rich genre died out with the rise of those all brainless games.

however I noticed the genre now resurrected via kickstarter... we may not see the legendary titles anymore but the spiritual successors or even clones are popping up as well as fresh new try into the genre.

neither of those

Total annihilation

SIns of a solar empire

Age of empires

Rise of nations

Age of Empires.

The RTS genre peaked with warcraft 2 and age of empires 2. Everything else has been boring after that. Same garbage over and over with a different skin.

Total Annihilation was my favorite.