Real time combat

[YC4B4U]

Sounds Interesting

I wouldn't mind seeing if that would work. Many strategy games have tactical combat such as Conquest of the New World and Star Wars Rebellion. However with Star Wars Rebellion I always wished that when a battle occurred I could switch to Star Wars X wing Alliance or similar.

But then I like RTS and TBS whereas some guys here don't.

Real time tactical combat would also require changes to the ai to ensure that it fought with armies rather than piecemeal.

But what would you do when you entered the modern age? Set piece battles haven't occurred in the 20th century like they did in the four millenia before it...

[Dis]

only if aircraft such as dive bombers and torpedo bombers can sink ships.

If so, then I'm all for it.

[cassembler]

I think Civ COULD make a great RTS game. I imagine a little Age of Empires with a splash of Simcity.

Anybody ever play Command HQ????

[OneInTen]

empire earth is NOT stategical

IMO, empire earth is more strategical than any TBS I've ever played.

[rickb]

Yeah realtime Civ, that's good idea, I actually want it to take 6000 years to play one game!

[Code Monkey]

I think the original poster is onto something with the Shogun comparisons.

I've completely given up on Civ3 for the time being and possibly permanently because I've gone back to playing Shogun:WE and cannot wait for Medieval:Total War to hit the shelves.

The turn based mode is every bit as engaging as anything in any Civ and has far less micromanagement (albeit it's missing some of the nice summary data that Civ gives us). The combat is purely tactical and doesn't depend on quick reflexes at all but rather good planning.

What's not to love -> You start with a small force at the beginning of the timeline. You build improvements. Budget your income for troop and improvement construction. Spy on the neighbors, expand your territory, assassinate pesky individuals, amass your power and conquer the map. It is exactly the same game that everyone loves in the Civ series with the exception that it doesn't cover the whole of time (and is far more realistic and believable for it), and the battles are fought in a tactical real time mode (but with complete power to pause and give orders).

I've never been much for the "turn based is dead because computers have moved on" bit, but as Creative Assembly shows, turn based doesn't have to be just turn based and is a far better game for it.

[sachmo71]

ATTENTION GAME DEVELOPERS:

PLEASE do not blur that line between RTS and TBS. Some of us enjoy thinking things out instead of conquering the world with a spearman RUSH. RTS is great for some, but IMHO it would ruin Civ...if it could even be done.

[ACooper]

DOWN WITH RTS!!!!!
DOWN WITH RTS!!!!!


Actually the combat in Star Trek: Birth of the Federation was real time and it worked well, except you use far less unit in the game.


Empire Earth sux. No strategy whatsoever. Everything is a rush.

I have yet to see a RTS game with real strategy in it. EU was the closest, but to paraphrase Lib "the interface sux".

[sachmo71]

The is a place in the world for RTS...otherwise there wouldn't be so many of them out there. However, how much strategy can you mash into an RTS game? There has to be a point of diminishing returns...there just wouldn't be enough time to take care of everything if there were too many things to do. What RTS does well fits into the profile. Can you imagine trying to appease the Aztecs on the diplomacy screen while at the same time trying to beat away their hoards of Jaguar Warriors? I know that I would get killed, but maybe some of the kids out there, you know, the ones that still have reflexes?, would be able to manage it.

[Willem]

Are we bringing this up again? I thought we had buried this thread a long time ago.

Oh damn, I just brought it up to the top didn't I? DOH!

[Code Monkey]

To the detractors: you're not even addressing the issue of real time combat as opposed to real time strategy, which is a whole genre unto its own.

I'm not a huge fan of RTS, I've logged my hours with Starcraft and TA, dabbled at RA2 and really had a good time with Warlords: Battlecry. Still, that's not the way you do a game like Civ.

OTOH, in my opinion, a game like Shogun which has every other element of the game in turn based mode but purely tactical combat is a much better game for it. It's not a clickfest, there's nothing to manage in real time except troops, and you can't even control things too directly. Give too many orders to a group of spearmen and you'll destroy their morale and they'll route. Successfully flank the enemy's archers with your heavy cavalry and they'll turn tail and run from you.

If it's a question between something like Jagged Alliance 2 and X-Com Alliance, I'll take the turn based mode every time. But, after watching one too many infantry face off against the enemy one at a time ad nauseaum, I'm ready for something better.

[Willem]

Originally posted by Code Monkey
To the detractors: you're not even addressing the issue of real time combat as opposed to real time strategy, which is a whole genre unto its own.

I'm not a huge fan of RTS, I've logged my hours with Starcraft and TA, dabbled at RA2 and really had a good time with Warlords: Battlecry. Still, that's not the way you do a game like Civ.

OTOH, in my opinion, a game like Shogun which has every other element of the game in turn based mode but purely tactical combat is a much better game for it. It's not a clickfest, there's nothing to manage in real time except troops, and you can't even control things too directly. Give too many orders to a group of spearmen and you'll destroy their morale and they'll route. Successfully flank the enemy's archers with your heavy cavalry and they'll turn tail and run from you.

If it's a question between something like Jagged Alliance 2 and X-Com Alliance, I'll take the turn based mode every time. But, after watching one too many infantry face off against the enemy one at a time ad nauseaum, I'm ready for something better.

OK, I see your point and yes maybe that might be interesting. Though on the other hand I have to wonder how cumbersome that might be. After all, Civ is already a very long game. And if there was a real time combat, a single battle would eat up even more time. Compound that over many battles, I can just see these players who use huge maps hunching over their keyboards for weeks on end.

[Hagbart]

Originally posted by Rage
any opinions

You mean like in Heroes of Might.. 3?

[pauli]

You mean like in Heroes of Might.. 3?

unless they changed some stuff significantly from homm1 and homm2 (which i doubt cause they're cheap bastards), homm3 is all turnbased, even in combat.

OK, I see your point and yes maybe that might be interesting. Though on the other hand I have to wonder how cumbersome that might be. After all, Civ is already a very long game. And if there was a real time combat, a single battle would eat up even more time. Compound that over many battles, I can just see these players who use huge maps hunching over their keyboards for weeks on end.

hell, it takes me weeks to play games ALREADY!

[Seghillian]

There's a good idea in this somehere I'm sure.

As far as I know (and I only know very few games) Shogun is a completely new idea in that it marries TBS with RTS and I think is the first game to do so. I think it's a superb game although the strategy part of it is weak and doesn't come close to CIV. On the other hand, CIV strategy is excellent although the combat leaves much to be desired.

I'm hoping to see a new generation of games emerge which take the best ideas of CIV and Shogun and put them together. I think it would need a fresh start - it would be hard to graft Shogun's battles into CIV and it would be hard to graft CIV's strategy into Shogun. But the idea of keeping grand strategy separate from tactical battles is surely the way to go and I look forward to seeing developments in this area. Both are great games.