The unique element of RTS games is the continuous progression of the game play. Real time strategy games are challenging due to the various strategic factors that involve successfully managing natural and financial resources, military planning, and battle execution.ĭifference between Real Time Strategy and Turn Based Games and building up a society and military machine to conquer more parts of a map and finally destroy your enemies completely. Most RTS games focus on accumulating resources through harvesting, mining, gathering, etc. To be successful the player must build an army and use the army to defend themselves and eliminate enemies. The object, at the beginning of the game, is to learn how to use these limited resources to build new units or buildings and what those new units or buildings are capable of doing to advance the player’s position. The games generally start with the player receiving a few units or a building.

Other popular RTS games over the years include Age of Empires (1997), Homeworld (1999), Company of Heroes (2006) and Sins of a Solar Empire (2008). Blizzard Entertainment released its Warcraft fantasy RTS game in 1994 and later the incredibly popular sci-fi RTS StarCraft in 1998. The company soon released Command & Conquer which added a multiplayer component allowing human players to compete against each other. Westwood’s 1992 release of Dune II marked the beginning of the RTS genre as we know it today. But imagine a game of Risk where everyone is moving at once and you are denied the ability to take as much time as you want to plan and execute your turn. Players decided where to reinforce their troops and when to battle a neighbor. In Risk, each player was given soldiers to spread out on a world map. The classic board game of Risk is one of the inspirations for modern real-time strategy games. Combine the strategic forces of chess, the “this unit beats that” element of rock-scissors-paper, and the challenges of learning to use specific and limited resources to build a military force with your enemy playing while you do and you’ve got a real time strategy game.

Army men rts free