Hey i was discussing that with a person here but they got angry at me for no reason so i will ask you

If you could choose one of these: Warcraft, Stronghold, Age of Empires, Starcraft, or Command and Conquer, which would you choose?


I am mostly referring to the most groundbreaking titles of each franchise, so for instance Warcraft 3 since it's the best known and the most popular. Or Stronghold 1 and Crusader as opposed to Stronghold 3. But you can choose any one you wish.

Or you can add other franchises. For instance the Zeus and Kleopatra games, or the Settlers.
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Have never played C&C

Warcraft 3 i liked due to the story but the gameplay is a bit strange to me. It's like a mix of RTX and RPG. But i can appreciate it, anyway. As with all Blizzard games, the voice acting is top notch. 'no one orders me around' 'tread lightly' 'what is it now'

Now, Stronghold is my choldhood game. Looking back at it, it does have flaws, like not being able to heal your soldiers, lack of a tech tree, and so on, but i find it the most enjoyable out of all these because there is less micromanagement, cause the vilagers act on their own.

Age of Empires is better than Stronghold gameplay-wise but i find Stronghold more enjoyable

I played Starcraft 2 and i enjoyed it but it's too fast paced for me to ever get into multi. I also haven't finished it because one mission is silly and you have to move your base constantly and its stupid




Overall, i like Stronghold (Crusader especially) the most but i think AoE2 might be the best as a game

If this is a desert island situation (which one game/franchise would you pick), I'd go with Kohan. Which reminds me how much we need them here. Unfortunately they are stuck in legal hell, though still available on Steam (last I checked) for some reason.

Warcraft 3 + Starcraft 1 and 2....
Totally overrated. There is nothing tactical, about this games.
Speed ist everything that matters. The player who had "more clicks per second" will win the game. This is a matter of fact.

I really, really love Age of Empires 2. <3
Because i like the mostly medieval setting.

But i also really love "Spellforce - The Order of Dawn". (Not a pure RTS game, but a RPG+RTS Mix. And a pretty good one)

Age of empires 2 and Starcraft: Brood war. Age of empires 2's campaigns were really fun (especially those of the expansion, huge battles in some scenarios, due to the more generous population cap than in AoE 1 with its 50 unit limit). Starcraft: Brood war had an entertaining story, nice campaign missions, and was fun in multiplayer too ("Lost temple"...those memories...).
Starcraft 2 was a disappointment however, they butchered the story (stupid ret-cons like "The Overmind was a good guy", killing off some iconic characters in a rather unceremonious way), didn't like the campaigns (apart from the Zerg missions, which kind of got the Zerg feeling right), multiplayer was a chore.

The first C&C had great atmosphere, with Kane as an iconic villain, but is a bit too simplistic in its gameplay imo. Was very disappointed by the over-hyped Tiberian Sun (painfully mediocre imo) and after that lost interest in the franchise.
The first Red alert was fun too, but also already somewhat silly.

Not a huge fan of Warcraft, the first game is archaic by today's standards with its controls, and Warcraft 1 and 2 suffer from the two sides being too similar apart from spells. Didn't like the emphasis on heroes in Warcraft 3.

Have never played a Stronghold game, so can't comment on them.

Stronghold series over all other, sure i did play starcraft with broodwar expansion but got tired of it beating it again and again still a good game.
I still haven't played warcraft at all or age of empires properly yet.
I did play some C&C games like tiberium sun several games in the franchise and red alert 2 but don't really hold any special opinions about them anymore.
I also found Stronghold crusader more fun and enjoyable from the rest of the games, so many levels to beat so fun and the extra units bring some change to the style of the game.
Also i like the original stronghold and stronghold 2 (funny when they get hit by a ballista), even stronghold legends was fun to me. The rest of the strongholds i didn't play like crusader 2 and stronghold 3 since old pc. Could have probably played stronghold crusader 2 if the pc didn't die on me.
My preffered game is stronghold crusader then.

Edit:
Also the earth 21xx series still haven't played 2160 properly is kinda fun even though it should be a C&C clone at least the first 2140 game. Am playing for quite some time with breaks. Had much fun with earth 2140 trilogy which i will return to when i beat the earth 2150 trilogy and earth 2160 games.
Now earth 2140 can be very hard which somehow the A.I. works only in the dosbox version but i really enjoyed the original campaign for both factions and how i crippled them many times with destroying their powerplants or resource fields even though it wasn't easy. Played some mission pack 1 with UCS since i wanted more and did like it but decided i will return when i beat the new games.
Earth 2150 escape from the blue planet had pretty interesting missions and factions, the research tree is also big. And the missions were fun if not hard sometimes. Now at moon project from earth 2150 which i played yesterday i feel kinda annoyed at the missions of ED since it's the last faction i need to beat. Will see how it will go.
It's kinda sad that the earth 21xx series could have been a much better game if the publishers wouldn't interfere too much with the developers of these games. At least that is what i read on a youtube comment from a developer.

Warcraft 3 is still my favorite RTS after all these years, so that one.

Of the remainder that you mentioned, in decreasing order of preference : Starcraft 2, Tiberian Sun, AoE2, Starcraft, Red Alert. (Dawn of War would've come before SC2 if you'd mentioned the series, ditto for Emperor Battle for Dune before Red Alert had you mentioned Dune)

Stronghold is brilliant as well, but it doesn't feel right to mix it with these series, which are all stereotypical classic RTSs.

I still watch Grubby's WC3's streams from time to time, to marvel at his tactical and mechanical brilliance. It's especially refreshing since MOBAs for some weird reason just doesn't interest me at all.

Warcraft II

Age of Empires 2. Still have yet to find a better or even equal RTS.

Second would probably be Red Alert 2.

Warcraft II + Beyond the Dark Portal because it was my first rts and Warcraft III + The Frozen Throne because I really enjoyed Arthas story and at that time even the graphic.

I was frustrated for a long time because i didn't know how to beat moderate AI. But i have got the hang of it. You just need to distueb his villagers at the beginning of Feudal Age.


Why do you think it best?

Total Annihilation.
It was a very groundbreaking RTS at the time. The scale of the maps and units were waaay bigger than anything else out, plus you could build more units than other RTS games, making for larger battles that pushed strategy over tactics.

And it was built from the ground up as a simulation. Units would hit or miss based off of the distance, speed, and angle/height of their target. And because it was a sim there was the potential for crazy things to happen like for example you could fly bomber planes over a mountain so they're at a higher elevation from the surrounding terrain, and you could actually get them to drop their bombs on other planes if the enemy plane was flying at the lower altitude.

One of the best things was the streaming economy. Unlike C&C, in TA if you wanted to build something, you didn't need to have all the metal and energy required up front, as long as you had it coming in as fast as it went out, you'd be fine.

Also you had a single commander unit that was both great at building and great at attacking, but if he died you lose the game. It is a neat way to add risk and reward, especially in the early game.

Back then most RTS games were copying C&C with rock music. But not TA, it has an incredible orchestral soundtrack created by the very talented Jeremy Soule. Worthy of listening to even if you don't like RTS games.

And the thing that really made it special is that you can mod the wazoo out of it. I couldn't tell you how many different crazy units people have made for this game. And with the addition of a map creator you could easily build your own levels.

Total Annihilation is easily one of the most influential RTS games made and it was way ahead of it's time.

red alert 2 is probably the best and more entertaining rts game ever made, i'd say it's even better than aoe2. it's certainly more dynamic. tactics and speed are a factor, much more poignant than aoe2.

play generals too, for a different yet still awesome c&c experience. some say it's the last great c&c game.

Age of Empires series (including Mythology) had the best atmosphere and great gameplay.

Stronghold is also very fun, albeit at a smaller (but detailed) scale. Units on walls was the one feature that Age of Empires never added.

I would like to mention Rise of Nations as well. The RTS that made me feel the closest to growing a massive empire.

Starcraft (1) is the best and most groundbreaking single-player RTS to me for two reasons:

1. It has three different races which play totally differently, but manage to be quite balanced (at least in single-player; I don't feel like "playing this race is so bad compared to the two others because..."; albeit I admit I like playing Zerg because all units self-heal, which means less micromanagement, while Terran is my least favorite race as it involves the most micromanagement and generally feels a very generic RTS race with its units etc.).

It basically feels like playing three different RTS games, when you are playing the three race campaigns. Great stuff.

In pretty much all other RTS games I've played the differences feel more cosmetic, only slight differences in units etc.

2. It has pretty interesting story and memorable characters, something which was unheard of for a RTS game when the game came out. I would still love the game even without a story and specific characters, but it does give the game its own flavor.

Other than that, I like Age of Empires (1) very much, as well as e.g. Age of Mythology. In some ways they are better than Starcraft, like how you can tactically build walls to make chokepoints for enemies etc. (Starcraft doesn't have any walls, and I guess they would be pretty useless anyway due to powerful aerial units.)

Age of Empires 2... I have a bit of an issue there as it has far too many "special missions" where you don't get to build a base and play like I want to play a resource-gathering RTS game. IIRC especially the Japanese campaign was full of such "nah, you can't build a base, sorry" missions, and I just got frustrated by them.

I haven't played Stronghold yet, maybe I should try...

I have a personal issue with Rise of Nations (Gold), not sure if I've just misunderstood something in the game or playing it in a wrong way or something... but to me it seemed all missions have a 90 minute time limit, hence I couldn't finish even the first mission I tried (admittedly, I was playing in the hardest difficulty). Even if I was able to fend off enemies from capturing my cities and capture some of theirs, I would just run out of time and lose because I couldn't capture enough enemy towns in 90 minutes. Boooo!

I like a relaxed RTS gameplay more where I can take my time, gather all the resources I need and build both my defences and attacking army with time...

Also I felt it had too much of... everything. Too many technologies to research etc. If felt like it had the feature-creep where the makers thought "let's make this like Age of Empires 1-2... but add 5x times more of everything, like resources, units, technologies to research etc.".

Yes but no. Sometimes less is more. This "feature-creep" irritated me already in Warcraft 2 where they had added more resources to gather "just because" (like oil; I don't recall if there some other "extra" resources as well). In Starcraft the developers wisened up and made you collect only two resources. Sometimes less is more.

Age of Empires II, Age of Mythology
Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds
StarCraft
Homeworld I & II
Rise of Nations (Rise of Legends was fun too)
Red Alert II, Tiberian Sun & the more recent Generals
Lord of the Rings: Battle in Middle Earth II
Warcraft III
Total Annihilation

I enjoy them all by nearly the same amount. OK, maybe i love Age of Empires II a little more than the rest, but still, they are all great games. The entire classic era was great.