Yeah, that's the fun one. I think the income is pretty accurate to what they throw at you, it's just that they're attacking from three bases, one of which is an air base that rarely loses units. The infantry attack is pretty cheap, so the three mining bases just about add up.

My only successful tactic for that mission has been to load up 8 APCs with 4 gunners, 3 grenadiers, 1 engineer, and just drive them straight into the Nod infantry base to the southwest, then capture its construction yard. Don't try to save your own MCV until you're fully secure, it's too hard.

I'm serious. :D There is a lot of shit AI in RTS, but then that can be said of all genres. What I'm a little upset about is that it comes off as a blanket statement which simply isn't true.

Off the top of my head try the Settlers games. The enemies run out of resources all the time in those games and a lot of the time I win those battles is by cutting off their supply lines.

WW3 Black Gold, while only average as an RTS has very realistic enemy AI much in the same regard as Settlers.

I don't mean to cut Crosmando a new asshole because I like him, I just don;t think he is being entirely fair.

Never played Settlers because it looked like a management type game and not the type when you blow up stuff.

Well there is the management stuff, which kind of turned me off too, but the later ones like 3 & 4 sway more toward pillaging and killing. :D

I'm going to just cheat (just like the enemy is) and give myself credits just so I can get a few Mammoths with railguns and knockout the bases.

I think you need a better RTS. I think you need this

This is common. I attribute it to most gamers using the term RTS to only mean games evolved from Dune 2. I rarely bother discussing the term RTS anymore.

I've played it, both the main game and expansions. I liked them because of the large amount of factions and the fact that there's no real "resource/worker harassment" because you get money from holding points.

IIRC, that wasn't the case at least in KKND and KKND 2, and they aren't even new RTS games. In fact, one of the most important tactics was try to hit to the enemy refineries and tankers ASAP. The enemy would try its best to regain the supply chains but if you were able to prevent them from doing that, quite soon the enemy would run out of oil (money) and couldn't produce more units.

When I read the thread title, I was expecting a complaint more along the lines that the enemy units should be more clever, like sometimes fleeing and regrouping if they see that they can't break into your base in one stream, and maybe try some other route. That is harder to implement I guess, and it could be the game becomes too hard or laborious for most players.

I recall the complaints back in the late 90s why the enemy guards in Thief: The Dark Project don't act more like real guards, e.g. sounding an alarm if they see someone keeps putting out torches, or locking down the whole castle if they ever saw an intruder, etc. I felt back then too they'd just make the game too hard, not fun. The Thief game could easily become impossible to play with too smart guards.

Play Starcraft 2 on Brutal and Elite. Then come back and write here.

If I was one of the guards I would be far more concerned with the extremely rapid moss growth problem in certain parts of the castle.

Dawn of War Dark Crusade does that quite a lot. Both sides start with unit they bring into battle and have to build up.
It was nice. :-)


Yeah, this game is bad in that regard. I played it last year (2015, oh those were the times) and I too noticed that AI barely harvest in most missions. In fact, in most of them not at all. I think they couldn't be bothered to put proper work into it so they just let AI to have huge pile of money instaed of gathering it.
No surprise they later even scrapped resource gathering in CnC 4 altogether.

As soon as its on GoG I'll get a copy.

Been waiting for Grey Goo to come to GOG for ages now, it looks like my ideal RTS (slower gameplay, playing defensively is a viable strategy, etc.