Thoughts on the strategic stagnation

[azalae]

WRangler Rhymer, I'm rather slow.

Could you post one of your replay? Preferably your best game. So that we can understand your strategy better.

Thanks.

[WRangler Rhymer]

Sure, I can. As to you previous quote I am not downing anyones suggestions. I was just making suggestions of my own to the comments of Out4bloods, because it seemed like he was upset. I should be able to post a game during the night if not, then i will post a game as soon as I can. No problem, thanks.

[Out4Blood]

Originally posted by WRangler Rhymer Look this is strategy talk, all I am doing is remarking about the comments you made, they were not said as an insult.

If you don't want to insult people then you should refrain from writing insulting posts. Here are a few examples of things that one could have found insulting:

• "The lack of strategy you speak of is your lack of attempts..."
• "...you simple have not try the WHOLE game"
• "It seems to me you play as the same nations and try strategies that are against their strengths."
• "...dont back yourself in the corner and play as one nation doing the same thing/"
• "I suggest you buy the strategy guide"

By the way I played top settings, not moderate, plus you dont know what your talking about you have never seen me play.

I'm just going by your own "strategy" post: A good strategy against MOderate and up comp.

You got problems buddy, but I will ignore all the crap you just said to me.

I got lots of problems, but at least I don't respond to reasonable strategy posts with a bunch of insults - and then claim to NOT be insulting.

I was just making suggestions of my own to the comments of Out4bloods, because it seemed like he was upset.

LOL. I'm not upset. Like I said: You're frickin' hilarious.

[WRangler Rhymer]

I do not find anything I said to be an insult, the comments you made it seem like you have played part of the game and hated it. All I suggested was to try the whole game. There is no need to continue with the insult, I have already said that I did not mean to insult you. You have misunderstood what I have said. Come on, can we please stop with this and continue to converse. Look lets just drop this, I am sorry if I hurt your feelings, can we please just continue conversing on strategy.

[Out4Blood]

Sure - just do NOT post stupid assumptions about ME.

If you want to talk about what OTHER strategies are viable, then do so. Just keep personal comments out of it.

[Bridger]

I think the reason we don't see so many strategy posts is because the game is so in depth. You can't simply documnet a procedure like in other games, because there are too many variables to consider that change every game. Only the early rushes can really be documented.

[Out4Blood]

Originally posted by Bridger
I think the reason we don't see so many strategy posts is because the game is so in depth. You can't simply documnet a procedure like in other games, because there are too many variables to consider that change every game. Only the early rushes can really be documented.

I think you're talking about specific builds, not STRATEGY. Without getting into the whole strategy vs tactics debate, I consider strategy to be the plan of action, and tactics to be the action. So a build pattern would be tactics that would support a specific strategy.

What I am talking about is variation in strategy itself. IMO, there is little variation in viable strategy (i.e., rushing vs. booming, attacking in classical vs. gunpowder, land vs. sea., etc.

However, regarding your comment, even build patterns seem pretty limited. On the Heaven's Forum (which does have more activity than here BTW) there is a whole thread chastising Carch for suggesting doing something OTHER than a SCI1 start. The overwhelming opinion was that SCI1, CIV1, COM1 was the way to go. That's pretty limiting IMO. Also, it may not be very wise, because you can hit someone's capital at 3:00 with a MIL1 rush.

[Bridger]

Ok, fair enough, but i think the strategies are already well documented. Border push, boom, rush, hammer and needle, etc. Just check out the BHG website or the Sybex strategy guide.

In regaurd to the sci1,civ1, issue, i don't think there will ever be a way to balance those 4 techs to creat a truely unique game every time. There will *always* be a "best" build order for the first age, but after that it always verys widly. Hell, even the first age can change by the 3rd tech if your planning on booming or defending a rush. And it can change by the first tech if your greeks or are planning a rush.

[Out4Blood]

Ok, fair enough, but i think the strategies are already well documented. Border push, boom, rush, hammer and needle, etc. Just check out the BHG website or the Sybex strategy guide

AHA! So you AGREE with me. Notice I said strategic stagnation. I'm not that there is NO strategy, just no new strategy DEVELOPMENT. And you said it yourself: "strategies are already well documented." And for a published book: Sybex strategy guide (written months before the game even goes gold; I know, I've written some) to be the tome for strategy means there is no hope!

When you consider strategy development and evolution in AOE and AOK. And in games like Kohan. Compared to them, RON pretty weak.

[Bridger]

I don't see the problem, this game is no different than others in that there are very few choices to win.

1) Kill the enemies economy
2) Beat the enemies economy


Economy fuels war, every single strategy in RTS games revolved around besting your economy or destroying the enemies economy. Of course your skill in battle is also important, but these 2 things can only be combined in so many ways.

[Out4Blood]

Originally posted by Bridger
I don't see the problem, this game is no different than others in that there are very few choices to win.
1) Kill the enemies economy
2) Beat the enemies economy

Well, it's not quite that simple. On the other hand you could say it's even simpler: Beat the other guy. But that's not a strategy, it's a goal. In fact, you could argue your "two choices" are just goals as well. The strategy should be, "How do I go about accomplishing that goal?"

Take a step back here for a moment:

GOAL - WIN GAME
---WIN BY TERRITORY
---WIN BY WONDER
---WIN BY CONQUEST
---WIN BY CAPITAL

Each of these different goals implies there are multiple strategies that will achieve them. Note that a capital victory doesn't necessarily require besting/beating their entire economy. You could say the same thing about a wonder victory, if your opponent was sleeping.

Each of those strategies will have underlying choices and tactics that will affect their success. Most other games are not so simplistic, and you'd expect in a game with as much breadth as RON to have more to it than just economy wins. What I HAVEN'T seen and DON'T see is a dicsussion of those strategic choices. You used to see stuff like that for other games. You don't here. And it's probably because of this...

Economy fuels war, every single strategy in RTS games revolved around besting your economy or destroying the enemies economy. Of course your skill in battle is also important, but these 2 things can only be combined in so many ways.

I'd disagree with this statement about other other RTS games. There are many RTS games where economy is not so dominant. And trust me, I'm a classic, old school boomer (AOE, AOK). "Economy wins" is my motto. But even then, there was ROOM for other other strategies. And they could win. The FLUSH was a strategy developed relatively late in the evolution of AOK strategy development. The problem I see here is that economy is so much MORE dominant in RON than in any other game I've seen, that it totally eliminates any other strategy.

This overwhelming importance of economy is what makes RON so monolithic. Just about every game I have seen/played seems to play the same way. Econ up, push on borders, armies clash, someone loses.

Probably the thing that bothers me most, and the thing that is most noticeable to anyone who plays Kohan, is that army composition is RARELY discussed or even mentioned. Why? Because you gotta make a buncha different stuff: light, heavy, archers, cav, siege, supply, general, scout. Because the game FORCES you to make different troops, EVERYONE has the same army, just in different sizes. So the "strategy" about which troop types to specialize in, build your economy around, and develop with upgrades doesn't exist in RON. Every unit takes 2 resources and a balanced army requires everything, so you gotta make everything. There are no choices, so there are no trade-offs.

When I compare that to Kohan: troop composition is everything. What goes with what? What counters that best? What complements ally forces? What Kohans go on what troop types? This leads to interesting strategy discussion even two years later.

Selection of strategy discussions for Kohan:

http://www.timegate.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=6777

http://www.timegate.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=6659

http://www.timegate.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=6856

Are we going to be talking about RON two years from now? I doubt it.

Just my opinion, of course I could be wrong.

[Out4Blood]

I also offer this compelling quote by Heavens_Myst:

I'm not gonna say RON is dead, but the fun level isn't even up there... I've talked to many people about it who have stopped playing and they've resorted to TFT (Swinger, CP, cont.). I've resorted to Raven Shield and I'm thinking about Counterstrike.... then I'll give a shot at EE2? or whatever it is.

from MFO

I am sure, much of the reason stems from the lack of strategic diversity.

[Badtz Maru]

Just tune WR out, it's not right to pick on people like him. If he would actually read the threads he'd see that there is a lot in common with what he is trying to share about his Moderate strategies and what O4B does in Toughest (i.e. building military first). He's just a little too 'special' to get that.

[Grond]

I've posted on this a few times myself, I'm not sure if it was here or RoN Heaven but I definitely agree the game lacks depth. I came to same conclusion about the causes also.
1. Rock/paper/scissors bonuses are too big
2. Ramping
3. Age advancement is to fast.
I've played mainly with slow and expensive research and even switched to very expensive later and this did help a little in that it was no longer practical to not upgrade your troops every age but the first 2 have a much bigger impact. I'd like to see an option to turn off ramping but I got shouted down unanimously at that suggestion. I have a feeling the majority of the problem though is the huge rock/paper/scissors bonuses and that everybody has the same units, even the Uniques are basically the same except for some nice graphics. I think this game may turn out to be a textbook example of why not to get too obsessed with the rock/paper/scissors model in a RTS game. I don't regret buying it, I had a lot of fun playing it for a while but once I figured it out there were no extra levels of depth to discover. I can't help but wonder if the designers would have come to the same conclusion if they had had a little longer to work on it. I did find the perfect solution however, I picked up the special edition of Combat Mission 1. Try using your Bazookas on my Tigers now!

[Out4Blood]

Nice point about unique units - sure they are better than their counterparts, but they die just as horribly to the usual counter - so uniques don't play much of a role. Although, there are a couple of exceptions where the unique actually has fewer counters, it's just not enough to change the game that much.