The Recent Lack of Historical RTS Games

On Wikipedia, I went to their Chronology of RTS games page and counted the list of RTS games released since 2007. There were approximately 55. I then counted the amount of historical RTS games released in that period. There were 6. What's with the overabundance of Fantasy and Science Fiction RTS games in the video game market?

And before you ask, Total War is actually a turned based/Real Time Tactics game, while Paradox does Real-time Grand Strategy games.

edited 15th Nov '12 12:06:28 PM by SantosLHalper

Company of Heroes 2. Awwwww yeaaaaaaahhh, baby.

edited 15th Nov '12 12:05:45 PM by VutherA

I'm not asking for the few historical games in the RTS, I'm asking why there are so few.

EDIT: That's another thing. Why is the Historical RTS market dominated by World War II games? Why can't we have another Age of Empires II or Cossacks: European Wars?

edited 15th Nov '12 12:09:05 PM by SantosLHalper

PLAY IT WHEN IT RELEASES ANYWAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY

Perhaps developers prefer the fictional settings because there are less people certain to criticize silly things that happen in the name of gameplay?

Probably because Creative Assembly has the market cornered on historical RT Ss.

Basically, the Golden Age of RTS games is over. They aren't nearly as popular as they were, and they don't sell as well. Ensemble Studios is gone, Big Huge Games is gone, EA has taken a nosedive in quality and dropped Westwood along with it... and so on and so forth. Most recent RTS games only succeed because they use existing stories and settings to cash in on, and thus they tend to be sci-fi/fantasy because those genres are ultra popular.

Look on the past and weep, for RTS games will never be the same again.

Not to mention history kind of beat us to answering the "who would win" question.

I think that Creative Assembly is the only historical RTS person that's still going, and even their games can more be described as alternate history, considering if you're dedicated and play long enough and well enough you can eventually own the entire map.

Same reason we don't have many historical RP Gs or historical platformers. Next question!

@Five X: You say like all of the latter sucks or something...

Because the industry only needs one RTS.

They don't suck, but at the same time... they lack a certain something, I think. Given the many fundamental changes to the RTS system (most of which have been really terrible) it's not hard to bundle in more recent RTS games with bad "innovations." I think that, when it comes to innovating, the two games that did that best are Company of Heroes (well, refining things from Dawn of War, but still) and Age of Empires III.

There's a lot more focus nowadays on getting the 'Real Time' (i.e. the mechanical aspects of play like micromanagement of individual units) right over the 'Strategy' (planning, forethought and macromanagement).

"Another Cossacks: European Wars"? Well, there was Cossacks: Art of War and Cossacks: Back to War. Then the sequel came, Cossacks II: Napoleonic Wars, which also had Cossacks II: Battle for Europe.

Eh if I'll go with real innovation I'll go with Achron or AI War Fleet Command...

Still, lack of mention of Wargame: European Escalation is strange...then again, prolly tactics too...but really, RTS has been actually lack the Strategy part for a long time (much more on tactics really)...

^^ Agreed

I think that‘s a silly argument. If you start to remove the real-time from RTS, then you just get turn based strategy games. Nothing wrong with that but RTS shouldn‘t reduce its focus on mechanics since that‘s part of what defines the genre. And strategy still plays a huge part in it.

It is, however, one of the main reasons why RTS games of today feel different from those of yesteryear.

However, I have no tears to weep for RTS. If anything, I'd weep for TBS, which seems to be even more dead. I may also be frustrated that GOG has all Warlords Battlecry games now, but none of the actual Warlords games.

I think it's because with nearly every historical RTS still played online, what's the point of making another one?

I mean, sure there's the bit about having no Early Modern European RTS (If only The Creative Assembly didn't skip ahead to the 18th century; they could have covered the Reformation and the Thirty Years' War!), but everybody thinks it's just about ancient/medieval/modern warfare.

Or there's just someone with an agenda against the push of pike.

@Nyarly: yeah...the devs said that they don't feel Ao E 3 to be a proper Ao E game, and Empire Earth 3 just go with crazy units and get panned for that...

Age of Empires III actually sold really well, and the devs were happy with it. If only they'd had time to make another game... but maybe they couldn't make something quite as perfect as III again, I guess.

Empire Earth III, on the other hand, was a buggy flop of a game.

The massive amount of entries and ideas for RTS games that are being proposed on Steam Greenlight says otherwise. There's a ton of TBS and RTS games on it, both of the historical, modern, and sci-fi types.

Perhaps another reason why RTS games, especially the simulation kind, aren't doing so well is because of the issue of balancing gameplay with realism. In reality, there's a ton of underpowered and overpowered units that would completely fuck over any tactician, no matter how good they are: chariots, heavy siege weapons, and archers being a good example, since many armies in those eras lacked the weaponry and knowledge of how to defeat them. A videogame would have to account for such things by giving the underpowered faction an edge, or designing the gameplay mechanics in a way that would be fair and fun to play.

Then consider the fact that the primary means of keeping control of the battlefield, such as troop formations, flag signs, and runners don't translate very well into fun gameplay. The old British TV show "Time Commanders" is a good example of how hard it can be to give out simple orders to an army in that era.

And finally, for the few games that try to be as in-depth and realistic for the era as possible, they tend to have some VERY steep learning curves and require a certain amount of previously learned knowledge of classical formation warfare. Not a lot of folks, except for the beer-and-pretzels wargamer types, are into that.

I believe Bruce Shelley said he felt like it wasn't an AoE3 wasn't an AoE game, but I can't recall if he felt he was speaking for his studio rather than just himself. I'll see if I can find when he said that.

edited 16th Nov '12 9:47:46 AM by VutherA

True, the Total war games and even some more modern RTS games do use entire formations as a single "unit", as well as allow you to divide or meld them together. I suppose what I actually meant was how in reality you had little control over said formations or other large groups in that era, so they weren't very tactical or even used often. Instead, tactics such as raiding parties, small groups of skirmishers, and total clusterfucks were more common that actual, proper formation units in that era.

How about this for an RTS idea? Instead of making an epic battle, focus the game on small raiding parties, no bigger than 20-40 people, maybe even less. The battles would take place in forests, towns, castles, and rocky valleys: bascially, places where there's lots of cover, and lots of hiding places. The units would be much smaller, such as 3-4 men per team, and each would carry different weapons or specialize in certain tasks, such as archery, swordsmanship, jousting, blunt weapons, fire-based weapons, etc. The idea would be that the raiding party would have to either destroy or capture the defenders objective, or wipe all of them out first.

The combat would be similar to Dawn of War II, but instead of HP or mana, units would have stamina, which gradually depletes when in combat, running, being demoralized, or taking hits. When drained, the unit becomes vunerable to being killed, but as long as they have some stamina left they can defend against attacks, use abilities, and survive injuries. Pinning in enemies and surrounding them causes them to lose stamina faster, since they have to block and focus on enemies from multiple directions, and getting attacked from behind while focused on another target means an instant kill. Thus, players would be encouraged to try and trap enemy units into areas where it's easy to flank and tire the enemy units while at the same time make sure the enemy doesn't sneak up behind your attacking troops either.

And yet II is still the most highly regarded in the series. I wonder why that is.

edited 16th Nov '12 2:00:20 PM by Recon5