Fhnuzoag

The aliens would have won if they weren't so delicious.

Well, the Caiphas Cain books are good fun.

Heh, I too loved the crap out of Sword of the Stars (once suitably expanded), though I suspect it wouldn't really address Rob's concerns, being generally MoO 2.5. Some additional points to the above: - Some of the streamlining actually produces value. For example, the developers removed ship refits altogether. This generally removes the busywork of keeping fleets up to date, and creates an interesting choice of when to build fleets. Now, when you might need them, or later, when your tech is better? Do you scrap that obselete fleet to save money, or do you keep it, knowing how much you've sunk your resources into it? Given how significant fleet upkeep costs are, on sane galaxy sizes, fleet management is therefore kept under control. It's often optimal to have only a thin line of scout pickets, and build a fleet when you want to do something with it. - Planet management is reduced to a slider. This could be more transparent, really, but it still clears up a lot of extraneous detail - essentially planet development becomes a choice of 'do you want the planet to be useful ASAP, or do you want to end up with something more productive in the long term?' Most planets are identikit, but at least the game is honest about it. Before colonisation, too, different planets are distinguished in terms of how rapidly they can be developed, and then what their long term value is. This makes valuable planets easy to distinguish, rare, and desirable. - Like the above said, the core difference between the races, their star drives, is a Big Deal, and the game is well balanced to make it matter. For example, one of the major tech researches for one of the species is the tech that upgrades their ship speed to 6 light years/turn. This is important, because on an average map, this is just enough so that a fleet parked in between two planets can threaten both planets simultaneously with single-turn attacks, something the rest of the races only get much later, or not at all. Likewise, the human race's use of nodelines for space travel simultaneously makes them vulnerable to chokepoints, but also means that their attack fleets can't be intercepted en route to their targets. This makes for the creation of decisive battles at the 'gates' of empires. - The pacing of the game is great. Well developed colonies are very hard to attack for most of the game, but it takes a long time for (most) planets be developed, and they are very vulnerable until then. On standard maps, first contact therefore happens with everyone having only their homeworld and a few baby colonies ripe to be picked off, leading to a harrassment phase to the game where everyone tries to bump off the opponents' micro-colonies, and kill off scout ships so that their own colonies remain hidden. There is much more of a rush/boom/turtle dynamic, than the usual way where you can boom un-molested and then steamroller the enemy, or get steamrollered in turn. Also notable is the severe restrictions on the number of ships you can bring into a single battle unless you research C&C advancements. - By accident, or otherwise, I think the designers manage to stumble on a very solid design paradigm to their strategy engine. Though it might not be obvious to beginners, SotS strategy is about Time and Information. Fleets take a long time to move around for most of the game, and some races can't redirect fleets in motion. Hence, spotting and predicting opportunities to attack is critical. Similarly, information is a big deal, because unlike Civ etc where you know there's a swordsman or whatever in your territory, there's a fairly soft gradation of fog of wars in play. Without sensor ships, you have no idea what is out there until they are right on top of you. If they use jammers, you know that there are *some* ships out there but not how many there are. If you don't know about their technology level, you won't know how fast those ships are travelling. Even if you have good sensor coverage, you only know the number and size class of the ships, not whether they are warships, colonisers, or even decoys. If you send out a scout to intercept the ships, you will know the ship designs of the particular ships you fight, but only have the *names* of the ships which were part of the fleet but weren't deployed into battle. And you might have cloaked ships, that can only be found by specialised detectors... You have to really out-think the opponent, and the game gives you the tools to do so. Players that use deception and surprise well enough to catch enemies off balance can defeat enemies many times their number and tech level. It's a lot more interesting than rolling doomstacks into each other. - The randomised tech trees implementation is also fairly neat. I suppose it synergises well with the unit workshop, because designs are to a point *not repeatable*, because sometimes you simply will not get the tech to build a certain ship, so you have to choose to either go with a second-best alternative, or go for a completely different concept.

Yeah, I'm not really a fan of how Blizzard does campaigns. Even Warcraft 3 was a bit of a chore, with most levels reducable to the same strategy, repeated. Arthas's campaign was clearly the high point, the rest of the game instantly forgettable. Single player campaigns I did like? Well... 1. Warhammer: Dark Omen. - Persistent units, and hard as hell. A proto-Total-War game, I suppose, without the strategy layer but with more varied units. Would be interesting to replay to see how much it holds up. 2. Men of War - Some of the levels were kinda a chore, but many others were strong because of scope that you will basically never ever see in a skirmish or multiplayer battle. Also made for a great co-op campaign. 3. Freedom Force - Get new skills and superheroes! Fight new supervillains! Also, a rare implementation of boss fights in a RTS that works.

Hey, I guess I'm one of those mythical campaign players also. And it's funny that the panel can't remember Dark Crusade. As with the previous author I've been falling out of love with the traditional base building rts. But still, I prefer campaigns to skirmishes because skirmishes feel repetitive, and too focused on build orders, which are my least favourite part of the game. I don't play multiplayer because I'm not that competitive. What I like about campaigns is the principle of developing a strategy. A good campaign gives me a new unit or a new enemy, a new ability or a new terrain with each level, and says, "here's a new toy, try and understand what the implications of this unit is and figure out how to fit it inside your strategy, and try not to lose in the process". I prefer that aspect of strategy games to working out how to perfect the execution of that strategy, which is a lot less interesting to me. I do also enjoy the visceral aspect of stuff blowing up, for sure. But it's being doled out new things and feeling like you've mastered some thing with each level that is the core of it. Campaigns and levels must also not outlast their welcome.

I think a major case here that needs to be considered is the case of games about the WWII Eastern Front, and Barbarossa in particular. The major aspect of that war is the onset of mud, then blizzard, and the effect of it on the German attack. Overall, I don't think a lot of games capture that well - mostly because the player has the benefit of expecting it, and so can make preparation against it. Unrelatedly, Betrayal at House on the Hill is a great example of a game built around a disruption element.