   What good competitive multiplayer rts games are there?
  Hey, I use to play starcraft and warcraft3 of which I was pretty good at them, except now I can't get back into them as they have kind of grown old, and I totally suck at them now, which doesn't help either. So I was wondering what new competitive multiplayer rts games are people playing nowadays?   
  I just bought Rise of Nations: Civilizations at War, Age of Empires III, and Rome: Total War. Of the three Rise of Nations is the most unique and action oriented. Not only is the focus more on action than building and upgrading but you can control your Hero from 3rd person and run around hack'n slash style wreaking havok on the battlefield(very cool idea). The sea combat is excelent as well, you can ram tiremes into eath other, board enemy ships and capture them, etc. AOEIII has great graphics and a redisigned interface. The theme revolves around the 1700-1800's or so with Europe fighting over the Americas. Gameplay is enjoyable and complex with many buildings, upgrades and a system for getting shipments sent from your home city. Rome: Total War is more strategy and micromanagement. It is turn based(think Risk) and I believe the multiplayer is limited to the real time battle portion of the game.If you liked any of the AOE games, the AOEIII is an excelent addition to the series but if you want to try something new, check out Rise of Nations. As for Rome: Total War, I'm not too sure it's whsat you are looking for.Oh and I havnt played the second one, but the Battle for Middle Earth games are supposed to be awesome. Great graphics, interesting gameplay, and it's one of the few fantasy themed RTS's around these days.   ;  Well, I've always been a huge fan of the command and conquer series ever since I saw red alert 1 on an IBM 166mhz (<3). Anyway, EA has just released the first decade pack for $59.99CAD so if you are in to this it's a great buy for 6 games + 6 expantion packs.   ;  Total Annihilation! Why wasn't this mentioned yet?   ;Quote:Original post by matt_jTotal Annihilation! Why wasn't this mentioned yet?I've actually been playing that recently :) Its still good after all these years, but I don't think anyone is really playing that online anymore :(;  Age of Empires II.(Green decided to build a fortress, so my brother(red) and I (blue) decided to come at him with Elephants and Siege weapons).(We got him good too. [wink])Command & Conquer Generals, is fun too.I don't think I've seen a map entirely destroyed quite soo quickly before.[Edited by - Thevenin on June 20, 2006 2:58:19 PM];  That's the largest elephant army I've ever seen! If my calculaions are right, it contains 180 elephants, which means over 36000 food and 13500 gold. How long did it take you to amass that?   ;Quote:Original post by DJ14IVI3That's the largest elephant army I've ever seen! If my calculaions are right, it contains 180 elephants, which means over 36000 food and 13500 gold. How long did it take you to amass that?Usually our Age of Empires II LANS last at least 4 hours (Occasionally 5-6). In that game though, we were running a custom map and given a fair amount of resources to start off with. Though, I usually build massive armies; if you ever play a multiplayer game with me, you'll notice I'm a huge fan of "Victory through massive numbers" and thats why I can't stand most RTSs. Games like Age of Empires III, and WarCraft, have such restrictive population limits! And on the other extreme, Rome Total War has an effective population limit of 6!Inaddition, Age of Empires II is the only game I've played that doesn't sacrifice unit IQ for smooth framerates; when you order a large army to attack something, they don't become mildy-retarded and stop shooting (Unlike EVERY other RTS I've played).   ;Quote:Original post by Thevenin Rome Total War has an effective population limit of 6!Wait, what? are we thinking of the same game,.. Last time I played Rome:TW, I had I think 40+ cities, each with atleast 800 or more soldiers stationed there, and I couldn't tell you how many armies I had fieled, must have been atleast 20, sure a few were resupply armies with only 4-8 unites, of like 80-180 soldiers each, but most were the full 12 (or is it 14 slots per army?)That is about somewhere between 60,000 and 130,000 men or so. So,... where is the 'effective population limit'?Edit, and the last battle I played, there were, I think, about 6,000 men on the field at one time.   ;Quote:Original post by johnnyBravoQuote:Original post by matt_jTotal Annihilation! Why wasn't this mentioned yet?I've actually been playing that recently :) Its still good after all these years, but I don't think anyone is really playing that online anymore :(Wrong. TA has Hamachi groups going: annihilate, annihilate2, annihilate3. The password is the same as the name. They'll probably get the registered version so each group allows up to 256 people so it can accomodate the rapid growth!   