I know there has probably been threads about this, but what kind of RTS:God-Game strategy do you prefer? The turtle, who stays and builds up an infastructure and base. or The general, who builds the minimal amount of buildings to create troops to launch an attack? I prefer the turtle technique, and one day I'll design a game with a more defensive slant to it. Also, what type of tech tree do you prefer? The chronilogical one (Age of Empires, age system), or a C+C building defined tech-tree. cheers

People turtle for one (or both) of two reasons in my opinion:

1) They're not very good players, and in order to cope with their lack of skill at directing their forces on the offensive, they take a defensive stance because it's easier to micromanage.
2) They like building stuff, developing their towns, and mucking about using the game as a sandbox.

The latter reason is fair enough, but it is rather at odds with the competitive nature of RTS games. It's all very well in single player, where there are no real time constraints, the game can take as long as you like and the only person who can get bored is you. In multiplayer, it's a horrible thing to do, it makes for incredibly long, dull games for either or both of you. Assuming you live long enough to get dug in in the first place, that is.

There have been some games which have attempted to focus on the defensive side of things... Stronghold springs to mind, although I've not played it multiplayer so I can't tell you how well it works in that respect. But you can't afford to encourage defence too much or you just get a bunch of players sitting in their base at opposite ends of the map doing nothing all day and no actual game.

The enemy would have to launch attacks at some point a la Real War, it gives you about 15 minutes until their recon units arrive, and the a full blown war breaks out.

My ideas are slowly changing though, how about that of army engineers.
You have to go in, inspect the area and build a military base with the tight infastructure for the troops who'll arive in X minutes.
What do you think?

Perhaps a mod project then...

Quote:Original post by nefthy
From my experience, if you have the chance to dig in, you have almost certainly one the match. The only thing that would stand in the way of victory is resource shortage and I can't recall having seen this since Warcraft I.

I'd disagree.

Resource shortage will almost always lose you the battle if you dig in, in any half decent RTS. The only exceptions are maps in which you have virtually limitless resources, which are generally considered cheesy maps anyway.

Quote:Original post by nefthy
My point was that resource shortage has become somewhat rare these days. I can remember getting stuck more than once in Warcraft I becouse I missused resources. I can't recall that about anothere RTS game.

What other RTS games have you played?

My point was that unless you play on silly maps or use cheesy game settings where resources are set to a crazily high amount, you cannot afford to turtle. All it does is delay the inevitable.

Even in games like DoW where resources are effectively unlimited, the rate of resource collection is still important, as it enables you to get more troops much quicker. (ignoring the fact that while you're hiding behind a wall of turrets, your opponent can cap all the critical locations and thus win the game without even having to try and break your defenses)

Turtling certainly doesn't work all that well in any of the RTSs that I've ever played - the only exceptions being, as pointed out already, on money maps or with excessively high resource settings.