Lack of actual tactics in many rts's

Many rts's such as command and conquer seem to suffer from a complete lack of realism and the lack of actual tactics. Basically, command and conquer is an economy simulation game: you spend more time building up your base than actually fighting, which is strange because it makes absolutely no sense that you can magically create a power plant in 6 or so seconds.

What generally determines victory and defeat is how well you build up your economy and what forces you deploy. Actually firing on the enemy however requires absolutely no tactics. So let's say that you have 4 tanks, and you want to attack the enemy's 1 tank and 5 infantry. You'd simply click and drag your units and tell them to attack the enemy...and that's about it. Once the firefight starts, you usually just ignore it and go back to base construction, because there's no point in actually directing your units. They will just stand there and fire at each other, and whoever has the superior firepower will always win. No point in flanking, ambushing or anything. Just stand there and shoot at eachother.

Has anyone else noticed this? That is why I like games such as the Total Wars series, which actually make tactics matter.

Try Company of Heroes or Dawn of War II.

You WILL have to micromanage your units if you want to play on a competitive level.

Well Command and Conquer has always been based on speed and reflexes more than strategic thinking. Though Red Alert 3 alleviated that a bit by adding more abilities that you need to use in order to be effective, you have to actually pay attention to what your units are doing.

Yeah, but that still isn't very tactical: it only involves clicking a special ability button. Command and Conquer doesn't seem to have a very realistic feeling and doesn't take into account a lot of things such as elevation, morale, etc...so battles are very bland and just involve dragging a box around a bunch of dudes and right clicking on the enemy.

Originally posted by Hewhoknowsall
Yeah, but that still isn't very tactical: it only involves clicking a special ability button. Command and Conquer doesn't seem to have a very realistic feeling and doesn't take into account a lot of things such as elevation, morale, etc...so battles are very bland and just involve dragging a box around a bunch of dudes and right clicking on the enemy.

Pretty much.

Originally posted by Hewhoknowsall
Yeah, but that still isn't very tactical: it only involves clicking a special ability button. Command and Conquer doesn't seem to have a very realistic feeling and doesn't take into account a lot of things such as elevation, morale, etc...so battles are very bland and just involve dragging a box around a bunch of dudes and right clicking on the enemy.

It's not meant to be realistic. Though you are simplifying what goes into playing that game effectively. Watch high level players in Red Alert 3 or something, it's a lot more than just clicking a special ability randomly and dragging a box around some of your units. Their speed is amazing. It basically comes down to who can click the most in the shortest amount of time who wins.

But no, you're right, they certainly aren't the most strategic games out there, more action than anything, really. As said, based on speed and reaction time and hand eye coordination than tactical forethought.

I never thought RTS's had anything to with actual tactics.

For tactics, I would think the tile based war games would be it. If anybody who used to have PC Gamer before 2007 would remember the Desktop General who reviewed and talked about tile based war simulators.

Seriously, both games I mentioned are much more tactics-focussed. DoWII doesn't even have any base building.

Would you even considering DoWII as RTS anymore?

I just played the demo so I'm not privy of what the entire game is but it reminded me of Diablo alot more than a RTS.

Company of Hero is actually a pretty excellent RTS game. Interesting single player, and the multiplayer requires alot of tactics as well. You don't have too many units, and have to shelter special units such as snipers in different spots and buildings for them to be effective, as well as defend and take the most important points. You could even blow up bridges to deprive your enemy of a pathway.

Yeah, I've played CoH religiously.

Originally posted by Smasandian
Would you even considering DoWII as RTS anymore?

I just played the demo so I'm not privy of what the entire game is but it reminded me of Diablo alot more than a RTS.

Single player, definitely not- sheer tactical game.

Multiplayer is still RTS enough to count.

I never played online in CoH.

I don't know why I never play online RTS's. I thin I get too overwhelmed.

I have always found enormous satisfaction in teaming up with friends against AI opponents- so long as the AI is any good, which is DoWII's biggest issue for me right now.

Though DoWII has a co-op mode for the main campaign too.

The Total War series is also really good...it would be cool if they could CORRECTLY make a Total War game in modern times.

It's just strange that games involving you commanding an army don't actually take into account that well how you lead your armies...and can somebody tell me how you can build a refinery in thirty SECONDS? Or how you can train a squad of "well trained" GDI infantry in 3 SECONDS? 3 seconds is about the time it takes for the recruits to walk into the horribly unaccurately sized barracks and maybe look around the room, only to hear "3 seconds is up time to go!".

I know that games aren't supposed to be realistic, but...

Originally posted by Hewhoknowsall
The Total War series is also really good...it would be cool if they could CORRECTLY make a Total War game in modern times.

It's just strange that games involving you commanding an army don't actually take into account that well how you lead your armies...and can somebody tell me how you can build a refinery in thirty SECONDS? Or how you can train a squad of "well trained" GDI infantry in 3 SECONDS? 3 seconds is about the time it takes for the recruits to walk into the horribly unaccurately sized barracks and maybe look around the room, only to hear "3 seconds is up time to go!".

I know that games aren't supposed to be realistic, but...

Originally posted by jalek moye
do u really want to wait hours

yeah...

most strategy games are supposed to last about 15-20 minutes. if every soldier took 2 minutes to create the game would last an hour because a huamn being dies pretty easily... i dont really see what youre getting at. it takes months for a soldier to be trained so how would you condense that in a video game?

Hes getting at the fact if things in gaming were realistic in training times, build times etc it would take weeks/months/years for buildings to be built lol...

Although I would also say COH for tactics, its the only obvious one. CoH for tactics, Supreme commander for strategic.

I know that if they are to have base construction on the battlefield, then yeah it would have to be condensed, but it would also be nice to have a turn based Civilization style overworld and an RTT style battlefield, like some games like Total War series, Endwar (sort of), Empire Earth 3 (but according to reviews not that well), and some other games have.