RTS PC games coming in 2016 ?

I have to say RTS is generally going by the wayside. Which is unfortunate because it has and probably always will by my favorite way to game.

I think there's a few things that contributed to the steady decay of RTS:

Phone games - A.D.D. generation gets their gaming fix through all the quick playing games on your phone. No need for a high-end gaming rig, which brings me to my next point.

Technology escalation - RTS has often been one of the most demanding/least optimized gaming vehicles and I think it turns a lot of people off. You could just go get a whole console and a couple of games for the price of a cutting edge graphics card that lasts 2-3 years before you have to upgrade again. Seems like every time a new RTS is released the graphics emphasis is way overblown.

Complexity - While shooters have gotten ADS/crouch/cover systems etc over the last 10 years and RPGS have gotten crafting(and a bunch of other stuff), it was all implemented more smoothly than all the new additions to RTS. RTS has gotten increasingly complicated, more difficult to balance, and less accessible.


I'm with a few others on here. I'd like to see AOE4, or just a really solid remake of AOE1. And unlike everyone else on here I'm not looking forward to DOW3 all that much. Looks like they've changed too much again and are continuing on the trend to add more super-weapons into the game, which is what killed DoW2 for me. I don't see why they couldn't have just done a re-vamp of DoW2 with a complete balance overhaul add the Tau and Necron as a first release and then add sisters of battle and dark eldar for 1st xpac, then add Mechanicus for a 2nd expansion. Then they'd have a really solid complete 40k experience.


If RTS is going to make a come back a developer out there needs to take it back to it's roots. Simpler combat with a very solid rock-paper-scissor balance system , satisfying base building, and a solid minimally buggy game engine. Graphics also need to be moderate with ways to scale it way up or way down (without the game looking awful). I'd also like to see a new RTS released that only starts with 2 factions. Each faction added makes the game exponentially more complicated to balance.

just my 2 cents

I agree man, old school RPG and adventure games have already proved to be worth the investment (PoI, Dreamfall Chapters...) so why RTS can't be the same?

TW: Warhammer is meh okay. You have to really like the Warhammer theme to the point of rose tinted glasses fanboy to enjoy it and not get bored or sick of the bugs or flawed feature design.
It's not real time strategy per se since it is a combination of two genres, but there's resource management in the campaign. Battles are the direct result of campaign actions (re moving your army to attack their army, which might have better units than yours).

I find it boring though, the building and resource management is very barebones, and unlike previous titles you have to decide what structures to build, and if you make mistakes or need to revise, you have to demolish due to limited slots.
Because there is no governor feature, the dynamics of generating income is extremely linear; nearly all the income is gained from building certain buildings (and that's like 1-4 types, of no particular difference), or waste characters' skills in bonus income, of which can never replace the former and prevents you from having good military characters.
In previous games you can have characters of varying talents act as governors or generals, depending on what they are best at: there was a rather dedicated civil element to the game when building an empire.
There is none of that in this game, all characters are there for the combat, and so any skills dedicated to running your regions better are more of a waste since you need them for fighting, and like 95% of the leveling up requires fighting anyways. Yeah sure it's Total War and Warhammer...but that's kind of the problem, really from the perspective of making a turn-based strategy game that's about empire building. It wouldn't be that bad if empire building is such a huge mandatory part of both the TW experience and actually getting your armies win battles in the first place.

If you guys are interested in TW, try the earlier games.

Dawn of Andromeda - space strategy, September 2016

And that is why i still play Sins of a Solar Empire, AOE2 and Rise of Nations. Srsly, if you want good RTS, just look back instead forward. All good strategies are, sadly, thing of the past, modern game industry is all about making money on easy attractive games which are shallow but can trive on large-audience hype and not only get away with their lies, but make profit from them by selling cut-out content in form of DLCs(day one DLCs for bonus scum points). Mb we will get WC4 one day, but thats really all i can hope for in terms of really major RTS.

BTW, TW is mix of 4x(eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, and eXterminate) and tactical game, hoi and stellaris are pure 4x, Armada and Ashes from what i saw are MOBAs to the bone.

And that is why i still play Sins of a Solar Empire, AOE2 and Rise of Nations. Srsly, if you want good RTS, just look back instead forward. All good strategies are, sadly, thing of the past, modern game industry is all about making money on easy attractive games which are shallow but can trive on large-audience hype and not only get away with their lies, but make profit from them by selling cut-out content in form of DLCs(day one DLCs for bonus scum points). Mb we will get WC4 one day, but thats really all i can hope for in terms of really major RTS.

BTW, TW is mix of 4x(eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, and eXterminate) and tactical game, hoi and stellaris are pure 4x, Armada and Ashes from what i saw are MOBAs to the bone.

WC4 only comes out after HL3 is released, now even Blizzard has got on the MOBA hype train and looks like they find new focus on FPS (Overwatch). So for the forseenable future, don't count on good RTS.

TW: Warhammer is meh okay. You have to really like the Warhammer theme to the point of rose tinted glasses fanboy to enjoy it and not get bored or sick of the bugs or flawed feature design.
It's not real time strategy per se since it is a combination of two genres, but there's resource management in the campaign. Battles are the direct result of campaign actions (re moving your army to attack their army, which might have better units than yours).

I find it boring though, the building and resource management is very barebones, and unlike previous titles you have to decide what structures to build, and if you make mistakes or need to revise, you have to demolish due to limited slots.
Because there is no governor feature, the dynamics of generating income is extremely linear; nearly all the income is gained from building certain buildings (and that's like 1-4 types, of no particular difference), or waste characters' skills in bonus income, of which can never replace the former and prevents you from having good military characters.
In previous games you can have characters of varying talents act as governors or generals, depending on what they are best at: there was a rather dedicated civil element to the game when building an empire.
There is none of that in this game, all characters are there for the combat, and so any skills dedicated to running your regions better are more of a waste since you need them for fighting, and like 95% of the leveling up requires fighting anyways. Yeah sure it's Total War and Warhammer...but that's kind of the problem, really from the perspective of making a turn-based strategy game that's about empire building. It wouldn't be that bad if empire building is such a huge mandatory part of both the TW experience and actually getting your armies win battles in the first place.

If you guys are interested in TW, try the earlier games.

As a long time TW fan(played every single one from Rome:TW up), Warhammer TW is one of the most disappointing because of how bare bones it is. I won't pretend the older base games were that incredible either, but with overhaul mods they truly become something special (Rome TW and Medieval 2 TW have a plethora of excellent mods). The newer games are harder to mod because of how the code is locked off due to CA wanting to nickel and dime for add-ons. This means that any hope for even modding the game to be better is a pipe-dream.

Warhammer itself suffers from lack of variety in every department(some units are so weak they shouldn't even count as existing in the game), heroes are way too OP (lvl 5+ melee heroes are almost unstoppable), and the AI can be downright weak at times(you can play any faction on legendary once you get the right first opening moves down because the AI tends to respond the same way every time). My only hope at this point is that Warhammer TW is so bare bones they can't possibly get any more simplistic and will start to add features back in the next game.

Halo Wars 2 is 2017 but at least its RTS.

Halo Wars 2 is 2017 but at least its RTS.

Looking forward to HW2. I bet it will be the best RTS of 2017. Could help revive the genre. We'll see though.

Halo Wars 2 is 2017 but at least its RTS.

Looks horrible compared to coh2.

Looking forward to HW2. I bet it will be the best RTS of 2017. Could help revive the genre. We'll see though.

Since the first Halo Wars was made by the same developers who created Age of Empires and Halo Wars 2 expands on the system(and storyline) they established before they went bankrupt. I sense it will revive the RTS genre. Besides the first Halo Wars was really enjoyable to begin with.

AI was always the weakness of the TW series, especially on the campaign map. Although there was a notable drop in the battlefield AI too when they moved to 3D with Rome.

Dawn of Andromeda might be interesting, but looks suspiciously flat. This long after Homeworld, I regard that as a serious shortcoming.

The genre is pretty much dead.

I think there's a few things that contributed to the steady decay of RTS:

Phone games - A.D.D. generation gets their gaming fix through all the quick playing games on your phone. No need for a high-end gaming rig, which brings me to my next point.

These unholy "gamers" are new. Even if we add one gazillon marsians starting to play phone games tomorrow, the number of CoH players are the same.

Technology escalation - RTS has often been one of the most demanding/least optimized gaming vehicles and I think it turns a lot of people off. You could just go get a whole console and a couple of games for the price of a cutting edge graphics card that lasts 2-3 years before you have to upgrade again. Seems like every time a new RTS is released the graphics emphasis is way overblown.

The same goes for many other PC games and the number of people (not percentage) prepared to buy more expensive hardware to play has increased.

Complexity - While shooters have gotten ADS/crouch/cover systems etc over the last 10 years and RPGS have gotten crafting(and a bunch of other stuff), it was all implemented more smoothly than all the new additions to RTS. RTS has gotten increasingly complicated, more difficult to balance, and less accessible.

Plenty of other more complex games around with steady fanbase: Civilization, Crusader Kings 2...

If RTS is going to make a come back a developer out there needs to take it back to it's roots. Simpler combat with a very solid rock-paper-scissor balance system , satisfying base building, and a solid minimally buggy game engine. Graphics also need to be moderate with ways to scale it way up or way down (without the game looking awful). I'd also like to see a new RTS released that only starts with 2 factions. Each faction added makes the game exponentially more complicated to balance.

This section is horrible. You wanna dumb things down and make it uglier? WTF. Would get you executed for RTS Treason if there was any law like that.


I don't get this defeatist, desillusioned thinking about "dead genre" and "dead game". If I went into gaming I would wanna be Relic: Unchallenged in RTS with a good following (millions games sold & 57th online ranked).
I guess you guys would try to sell a phone game or a FPS and the business case would be "look at all the people".

Looks horrible compared to coh2.

Its more like starcraft than coh2.

Its more like starcraft than coh2.

Looks to me like modern version of KKND crossfire really.

Looks to me like modern version of KKND crossfire really.

This is a solid 35+ y.o. player we're seeing right here, ladies and gentlemen. I salute you from my geriatric house over here.

Looks horrible compared to coh2.

well.. it is design for console. Wouldn't expect much from it then.

well.. it is design for console. Wouldn't expect much from it then.

...

Battle for Middle Earth 2 was a console port, and a great one. I never played HW1 but it looks most similar to BFME, so there is definitely promise.

Hearts of Iron IV

Downloaded it yesterday and I have to say, looks pretty cool, but as the dumbshit I am, I am just too stupid to win the tutorial.