Command and Conquer 3

Sparky, the only purpose of squads is to make the player feel like he is controlling a big army. It's comparable to Warcraft3, shiny blinking spells everywhere and you lose the oversight. Effects and the graphics count more than gameplay.

Well that's not true, seeing as he IS controlling a bigger army, whereas shiny blinking effects don't effect gameplay whatsoever. Squads reduce micro as well. I agree with you though, I see what you mean.

acually agm spam is not solved by a good counter system.
people will just spam a well balanced army.
spam is solved by limiting the economy, but this unfortunatly can slow down the early gameplay.
or promote camping ala bfme 2.

off topic: i would much prefer the bfme 2 economy stuctures to have a much larger radius to gather resourses from, then the artifiscial limit they have now. The gradually dropping income from multiple mines/farms promotes camping.

Bfme 1 had another problem there economy was so fast that you floated in it late game. And you jumped instantly to later tier units. Cost efficiency was not as important because you had alot of money. But if you lowerd the income to 10 then you would also slow down the gameplay a bit as people buildt so called useless units as well.


IMO a ideal rts is a game that promotes early agression, and active defence. A game with a soft counter system and a few tactical units. Preferably only 1 side which you customise by choises you make during the game. Around the 2 minute mark after some scouting has been done the player can pick a route to go. Is it benefiscial to have cheap spammable units, or do i need specialized units, or do i need really good infantry, or do i need a good economy? Easier to balance and more choise is made on the player on a per game basis. The story could be your manageing a side in a long civil war. As for the map there should be bonuses for creeping.
The economy should be limited to how much map control you have and how much you invest in it.

You just described how WC3 was supposed to be (well, except of the game speed, Blizzard games are much faster).

Basically it comes down to maps, map design and resources, but also game speed, ye. Force the player to macro and also force him to micro his units as he cannot afford spamming them for 30 minutes. Goes together with a PopCap, you do not need a big army, 30 useful units are much better than 20 squads along with Attack Mode and praying that you win the battle as you have more squads than him, lol.

Creeping is a personal preference.. I dislike it, but mainly because it takes macro away -- WC3 was pretty shallow in that matter. That's probably the reason why many WC3 players go back to SC.

Huh? Cypher, whether a game has a popcap or not has absolutely nothing to do with functions and abilities of units. There's no reason why popcap=more abilities.


This doesn't make any sense. If you sacrifice an army, you're reducing your unit count, therefore even with a popcap you can keep spamming so long as you're producing as fast as you're losing units. What are you trying to say? Popcap games only stop spamming (actually, they stop mixing too) when you're NOT sacrificing/losing units.


Ok, so what do you call triple goblin pit in BFME 2? It's a popcap game, but it doesn't really force you to mix even though it has a popcap. Besides, what does this have to do with popcaps? In what way would CCG require more micro if you had a popcap? If you don't micro in CCG, you lose effectiveness. This is going to be true regardless of whether you have a popcap or not....


Actually, yes it is. If you want to get technical, what I'm referring to is the effectiveness of spam. If you reduce the effectiveness of spam, then less people are likely to spam, and spam is much less of a problem to worry about, therefore it's "solved".


Lol, you have a very poor definition of what spam is. Spam is massing one (1) type of unit, not mixing an army


No, huge army size can be solved by limiting the economy. Whether the huge army is made of spam or mixing doesn't matter, the point is it's huge because of many factors (including map size/movement speed, build speed, lethality), economy being one of them.

PopCap goes together with limited ressources, I didn't even play bfme2 for real after bfme1 which was a disgrace to the RTS genre.

If you do not limit ressources, something went wrong. You are not creating games for noobs made by noobs if you want a game to be successful or even successful in cyber sports leagues.

Limited ressources limit spam. A PopCap limites spam as well. So what can you do so that the game will not be shallow? You allow the player to upgrade his units and give them abilities. Preferably useful abilities, btw.

You cannot simply say "Oh, I don't like my 30 xxxx units, I will sacrifice them and buy 30 yyyyy units as I'm rich any way". You won't come far with that attitude in a game like StarCraft.

PopCaps do NOT work in EA games yet as they made mistakes right at the start:



EA puts in small maps (bad), only a few USEFUL maps (bad), the map design could be improved (bad) and you have unlimited ressources (bad) plus the game speed is not that high (bad). Only speaking about ZH and CCG, I mentioned my love for the bfme franchise above.

You cannot use a PopCap is you screw these things up - for obvious reason.

But if you screw these things up.. how is the game supposed to be a successful multiplayer game? With thousands of pro gamers competiting for titles? I'd like to throw the term "utopia" in the room.

spam is building hundreds of units and haveing no way of micromanageing them because they are way to many. 100+, and you recover a few seconds after you lost that huge army.
or spamming units and sending them on suicidal runs.
aka mordor orc spam, goblin spam, any spam of 1 or 2-3 units.

just pumping out units faster then any mortal man can click.

You cannot micromanage units if they do not have any abilities. What else besides "A" for attack mode can you do? You are mindlessly spamming units as the person with more units wins. Wonderful concept. You do not need 100 units, the point is that you simply set a waypoint for your barracks / war factory (or however buildings are called) and constantly build units as you simply need to replace fallen units. Why even bother to care about units, you got the money any way?

Micronagement is not just using unit abilities, changing the stances of units or stuff like that.

Example: Unit A has weaker armor than unit B. It has lower damage capacity than unit B, it has lower HP than unit B.
HOWEVER, unit A has longer range of fire than unit B, unit A has higher movement speed than unit B.
Thus with micro, unit A will win, as it can allways fire at unit B if the player makes sure that it can keep out of B's range.

That is also micro... maybe even moreso than just using abilities.

EDIT: So if you use Attackmove with unit A. It will die.

This post has been edited by STCAB: Feb 10 2007, 13:52 PM

Yeah and it's a nice theory (actually games like WC3 work like that), but it doesn't apply to modern RTS games with tanks and infantry, most units have a similar range. The only difference is armour / fire power and price.

Btw, I'm exaggerating a bit here, CCG and ZH do have useful abilities like laser lock, however, I think that EA is not going the right path if they take them away (my prediction) and do not add new ones.

Nobody needs 5+ abilities for each unit when they do not help you at all. But there's so much you could do, inject Tiberium to get more fire power, but lose health, making units invisible for a few seconds, calling for a small air strike etc. There's much potential.

How can you possibly think that most units have similar range? That's simply not true and pretty unimaginable seeing as it'd totally kill an RTS.

- Rockvee+ micro > Gattling Tank, Rockvee without micro < Gattling Tank.
- Nuke Overlord + micro > Autoloader elite Battlemasters, Nuke Overlord without micro < Autoloader elite Battlemasters.
- Helix + micro > Battlebusses, Helix without micro < Battlebusses.

All based on range alone. Price and armour haven't even come to question yet.

Yep, sparky's right. Cypher, speed and range are just as important stats as attack and armor, thus whatever game that disregards them is likely a bad one. WC3 is more of an ability-focused game.

This post has been edited by STCAB: Feb 10 2007, 18:18 PM

Am I talking to a wall? That's not a real range difference, as soon as that Overlord will shoot, the bm will shoot as well. Rockvees might have a bigger range (doesn't apply to CCG though) but that's only a small difference. Range difference = melee vs. 750 range elves in Warcraft3. Or a melee unit like a Berseker vs a siege tank in Starcraft.

I won't talk too much about generals, but point is that abilities rarely are the only micromanagement factor that needs consideration and it doesn't matter what it is that keeps units apart as long as there is something, stats of a unit aren't limited to Armor, damage, speed, and cost. There are tons more that you are ignoring.

Let's go through a few of them for a hypothetical tank unit:
Speed
HP
Armor type
Damage
Cost
ROF (rate of fire)
Fire range
LOS (line of sight)
The speed the cannon of the tank can turn
How much the cannon actually can turn
The the time it takes to turn 180 degrees
Type of projectile (Is it homing? Is it insta-hit? Can it be dodged?)
and others...

And with these things in mind can you know how a unit is properly used/microed.

So yeah... We're not just talking about generals here. We're talking about micro. Don't forget. You seemed to sidetrack of to focus on generals.

Well, I'm doing that as AGM often compares games to ZH. Makes sense as the gameplay will probably be closer to CCG / ZH than to the other CNC games (I hope). You are referring to some things like rate of fire that is static, cannot be changed. That's what abilities are for.

You always select units and give them some orders - that's not real hardcore micro. Micro is multi tasking, micro is playing to the maximum to keep your units alive and win battles that cannot be won. Now look at an average RTS game, watch replays of good players and see what is happening. Most of the times people spam, spam, spam and do not care much about their units - why should they? They got enough money.

It really goes together with my other point, limit resources, they should run out. If you know that you cannot afford many units, you have to care for them.

If you look a top level replay of act of war. You will not see spam spam spam. You will see alot of "tricky" things. I won't speak for generals though. But I have played generals and seen a player spam like 30 battlemasters. I killed them all with 2 rockvees.

This post has been edited by STCAB: Feb 10 2007, 19:30 PM

Well, my point is that normally everything is static. You have a specific range, a specific speed and a specific damage. You can foresee which unit is going to win in a battle between two equally skilled players. Only upgrades can make a difference. Abilities will add a new factor in battles, you could upgrade your rate of attack, movement speed, fire lightning bolts or whatever. It adds micro and makes units more useful. You will not need a big army now, you simply will need to improve your micro, pull hurt units back and so on.

Now, to come back to this whole PopCap discussion, it literally forces the player to micro his units. You will be even more chance less if you spam tier 1 units until you reach the PopCap and your opponent teched and kills them with a few tier 3 units. gg, wp.

Just total nonsense. Whole ZH thrives on these small range differences and you call them 'not real'?

I see your point now. But won't upgrades just make a new static?

So Cypher what you're saying is that you don't need to micromanage in CCG in order to win (since it doesn't have a popcap, and micro is only important in popcap games). Ok


Yeah, I totally get it now. See, I was thinking that the limited effectiveness of a unit's default behavior is what forced you to micro them in order to win battles, but now I see I was wrong! Silly me