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What are your top two strategy games you play competitively?
Command and Conquer Generals Zero Hour:
It has a very active community and there are lots of tournaments. Matches are very intense and fun.
Europa Universalis IV:
At this point of my life, I can say I am almost super pro at this game with thousands of hours 🥲
I also want to get into Red Alert and Star Craft series but I find them super complicated for some reason lol. Maybe I lost my game learning skills at the age of 29…
A post on Tildes that mentions EU4? Someone hold me back...
Same here, man. There's just something so familiar about booting up a new save, then dominating my immediate neighbors withing a couple decades. Though I don't really play it competitively, or even multiplayer at all. I just put it on one monitor while watching youtube vids or soccer games or some anime on another monitor. Then before you know it I'm taking on France as Portugal or the Ottomans as Bohemia or something.
I also love CK3 and Vic3, but those I only have a few hundred hours in each, so I'm not quite at the level where I just zone out and conquer stuff. I actually need to pay attention to stuff (typically event pop ups in CK3 and profits and PMs in Vic3). Plus CK3 is much better for role playing than either of the other two.
In my younger days I played a bit of Star Craft 2 and DOTA 2 competitively. But I don't have the (a) reaction time for how hectic SC2 is and (b) the time to devote 1 hour per match to a round of DOTA 2. Like I can play something for hours, but I need the ability to pause and drop things as life demands. And that doesn't lend itself well to online games where you need to commit to 20mins-1hr of uninterrupted time.
Also played Gwent for a while when it was in beta and then when it first released. Great card game, very unique, but eventually they made a lot of drastic changes in a short amount of time and suddenly it just felt like too much effort to keep up with the meta.
Marvel Snap I really enjoyed as well when it first released, but then their monetization really became blatantly anti-consumer (in my opinion) and it just really didn't sit right with me, even though I never spent a dime on it. And for added shits and giggles, I see ads for the game now that start off with "What if there was a game where you couldn't just come in and spend tons of money to unlock everything..." and I just find it so hypocritical since they have shit like $99 cosmetics and a bunch of other ridiculous whale-hunting bs.
Lastly, I was also really into Civ V for many years (before I discovered EU4) and got pretty good at it. Was regularly playing deity-level games and winning fairly regularly. Didn't play much competitively, but a childhood friend of mine sometimes organized multiplayer games with some of his friends from college, and I felt kinda bad that I was way more familiar with the game and meta than they were. So I just played peacefully to expand and never started any wars (but I definitely finished them if anyone attacked me first).
Excited to get EU5 in a couple years?
Oh for sure, though I really hope it comes out this year or next year. I was hesitant when I first heard about it because EU4 is probably my favorite game ever, and I was worried that if EU5 didn't live up to my (admittedly super high) expectations, then it might sour EU4 for me since I'm not big into playing older iterations of games that have newer versions out there.
However, I think Paradox have done a great job with CK3 and Vic3 recently, so I feel like EU5 will pick up from there. CK3 was pretty good at release, and only got better from there. And Vic 3 definitely had some flaws (and still does to be fair), but has improved noticeably in the last year or two. So I'm confident that even if EU5 isn't perfect right at the start, within a couple of updates it should be much better than at release.
Plus, after a decade playing EU4, it'll be interesting to play the same time period and nations and historic events through the lens of a completely different game.
How bout you?
Paradox for sure is pretty hit or miss, but like you I think that CK3 and Vic3 make me hopeful for EU5. I think especially on the CK3 front, while the smaller DLC have had mixed reception, the bigger expansions like Tours and Tournaments and Roads to Power have been pretty successful. I'm interested to see how the upcoming steppes DLC pans out. Additionally I think that Stellaris has gotten its act together pretty well with Machine Age after a few years of kind of meh expansions. So I share your confidence in EU5 being pretty good, even if it isn't perfect on launch.
I haven't been playing as long as you (only about 1500 hours here) but I agree that the new mechanics will be interesting to play with. Plus iirc the start date is ~100 years earlier in 1377, we won't even be starting in the same time period! It'll be fun to see if the earlier start date shakes up which countries usually are more powerful - the Ottomans come to mind since they won't be as dominant in Anatolia at start date as they are in EU4. I'm also happy they're supposedly moving away from the mana system in EU5.
Regardless of how good EU5 is on launch though, I'll probably keep playing EU4 as well for a couple years yet; I'm really loving the Anbennar mod and it'll take a ton of work to shift all the amazing content the Anbennar team has created to EU5.
Great point! That is definitely something different and exciting.
I’m one of the few people that actually likes the mana system in EU4, though I’ll admit that it isn’t realistic. But CK3 and Vic3 don’t have a mana system and they do just fine, so I’m excited to see what EU5 will bring. I heard they’re simulating every single pop in the game, similar to Vic3, which is cool.
I’d like to tell myself the same thing, since EU4 will have a decade+ of polish and balance fixes, but I feel like I won’t be able to control myself trying to learn all the new nations and mechanics. I don’t usually buy games at launch, but I think this will be a big exception for me where I’ll preorder it the second it’s available.
I recently started a Bohemia game and ended up with PUs over Hungary, Prussia, Great Britain, Portugal, Spain and I just claimed Sweden. By the mid to late 1500s. The Bohemian elective monarchy is actually cracked. It allows you to pick a monarch from a ruling dynasty of your highest developed neighbour. Which is stupidly powerful. I'm also Emperor. Inow own almost all of mainland Europe and the New World because GB, PT, and SP went full colonial.
While it's a comfort game for sure, I may still be pining a bit for the time before mission trees. Missions really do make it too easy.
Oh wow that’s nuts! Yeah I find colonization a bit tedious in the game, so simply vassalizing GB, Portugal, or Castile/Spain (or all three like you did) is usually my go to strategy where possible.
Yeah the amount of OP missions has grown significantly in the last few years. It went from something I mostly ignored to something that pretty much dictates your expansion path. I hope EU5 goes into more of a choose-your-own-fate route rather than set missions for every nation (even if some are branching missions, I feel like that’s not enough, it just changes it from one to two options).
It honestly surprised me too. I wasn't even trying to go for a PU game, but I quickly figured out how that elective monarchy worked in my favor and without trying half of Europe ended with a Lancaster (don't ask). But come on, I can't resist a quick Claim Throne on a couple thousand dev Spain can I?
I found a video from The Student afterwards that turns this into a borderline exploit, because you can just switch between an elective monarchy and an absolutist monarchy for 50 reform points. And each time you'll be prompted to select a new ruler, which could be the dynasty of your largest neighbor. I didn't do this myself, but it shows the power of the elective monarchy.
I thought I'd play a relatively chill tall-ish game. But I ended up with all of Europe.
Oh yeah I forgot to mention that I owned and integrated Poland and Lithuania too. Those are free grabs from the mission tree so I didn't think about those for a second.
That sounds like a fun game!
If I had a nickle.....
I've just given up on trying to play tall. There's too much temptation to just conquer everyone left and right. I feel like I'm actively hamstringing myself if I don't take a few provinces here, and another few there, and then next thing you know I've taken half of Europe.
That's actually one thing I really like about CK3 and Vic3, that they feel better to play tall in. CK3 for the role play and ease of managing your lords, and Vic3 for the emphasis on producing more with less, really maximizing your efficiency. Though of course, having played EU4 more than both of those games combined, I still find myself expanding exponentially in both of those games as well. Why shouldn't I get more vassals (CK3) and resources (Vic3)? It's free real estate, baby!
I never could resist the temptation in Vic3 to annex rather than sphere.
Thing is, is that a relatively chill diplomatic HRE game used to be possible. Missions just straight up set me up to PU Poland and Lithuania from the word get. It just significantly moves forward the timing of your early game power spike.
By then, you're the top dog.
I think my next game is going to be a free city..
I don't know about competitively but I enjoy pushing myself vs the AI with friends on Sins of a Solar Empire 2, Stellaris, Total War Warhammer 3, and Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance.
I recently picked up WARNO and have been making my way through the campaign with a friend.
It depends on how you rank the games. Top by fun, by strategy, by depth?
Zero Hour was definitely my jam when I was younger, I think I played it in high school until I hit university. Met a few friends through it, although I haven't stayed in contact with them much...
I haven't played any RTS games competitively in a long time, but back in the day, I also used to play StarCraft and StarCraft 2 at a pretty decent level. I quit mostly because Dota 2 got its hooks into me not too long after.
Warcraft 3: The Frozen Throne was also fun and required a bit of thinking instead of just spamming units constantly. I think I eventually quit because I felt that the TTK was a little bit too high for my tastes.
Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance is pretty fun as well, and pretty deep, although I strongly disliked the metagame at the higher levels back when I played as opposed to how I wanted to play. I eventually started defaulting to making comp stomp lobbies with some friends.
Recently I also got sucked into playing Red Alert via OpenRA, but I wouldn't really consider that "competitive" and more "1v1 with some friends". I don't think I'm good enough to go anywhere close to a decent competitive level any more.
StarCraft isn't so complicated if you think of it as a game of spending. Basically, resources don't attack, so converting them into things which do attack is how you win games. And until you get to a very pro level, your games will be won by who has more "things which do attack." (This is affectionately called the "stuff" league, as in "who has more stuff?")
Warning: Math
If you know one fully-stocked base pulls in about 800 minerals per minute (16 workers taking ~5 seconds per trip, getting 5 minerals each time) and you know the cost and build time of the units you want to make, that equation helps you solve for how many of that building you need to have enough simultaneous ways of spending to avoid banking excess.
Using Protoss as an example in SC2, a Zealot takes 27 seconds to build and costs 100 minerals. So, we can deduce from this that one base can support 4-Gateway Zealot production if all its minerals are being used for that purpose, since each Gateway could build 2 Zealots per minute.
This is obviously more complex when you take into account the different buildings and units involved. But the basic concept of "spend your resources" still applies.
There was a StarCraft course at UC Berkeley a long time ago, the few lectures that were recorded persist on YouTube on this video page: (link) but they're not all in a playlist and they're pretty low quality, so it takes a little digging to find them. But the course focused on the mathematical applications and game theory using StarCraft as the case study, which means even though the videos are old and focus on SC1, the basic principles still apply to SC2 and other strategy games in general.
My pals and I have played Age of Empires 2 regularly for the last 4 years. We still suck.
I love EUIV, but I don't played it against humans.
The one strategy/RTS I play is Beyond All Reason.
It's a free spiritual successor to Total Annihilation. The amount of units, various strategies and scope is pretty mindblowing.
It also has a pretty chill community.
BAR is great. It's an RTS that is not as 'twitchy', which I think makes it much easier to introduce friends to. A buddy and I play it every Monday night. We used to play StarCraft II Coop together a bunch, but the pace of SCII is much faster and my friend struggled to keep up with it at higher difficulties. BAR is a lot slower paced, but not so slow that it's not interesting.
I've seen BAR mentioned a few times now and it certainly seems interesting.
My freinds and I had hundreds of hours playing coop vs modded AI in Supreme Commander FA and 2.
Is BAR another RTS that's primarily PVP or do you think it would cater well to someone who likes playing skimishes against AI?
It's good for both IMHO. The PvP that I've played are usually pretty large lobbies, 8v8 seems to be the standard.
You have a couple of options for players vs AI. You can play against normal bots that I honestly find pretty challenging, especially on larger maps. You could also play against either the Raptors or the Scavengers. These are a more classic PvE experience. I've never done the Scavengers, but playing against the Raptors is basically like a tower defense game. Waves of waves of aliens come to attack you and you have to survive until the Queen shows up. You win by killing her. Super fun.
Oh that sounds really pretty fun! Cool that there's some specific PVE modes rather than just skirmish.
Thanks for the reply, I'll let my freinds know.
Not much of a competitive RTS player myself, but some of my buddies and I will hop on Rise of Nations from time to time. Even playing solo against computers is consistently so much fun. There's still a community playing regularly. And for a 20 year old game, it holds up phenomenally well.
Honorable mentions go to Generals Zero Hour and the Red Alert series.
Hell yeah, +1 for Rise of Nations. I grew up with that game. I'm so glad they've kept it playable after all these years.
I used to play Magic: the Gathering a lot, I actually managed to play it against all levels of players, had a great time (Never could quite make it to a Pro Tour) and I miss having a community where I could test my skills at various levels, and keep trying to beat the pro tour caliber players that frequented the stores. Arena doesn't cut it for me anymore, because I miss the interpersonal experience.
I want to play more board game strategy games, but it's hard to find people who want to commit to it while also being okay with the possibility of losing. Root seems to go over okay, I haven't played Scythe in ages, but if I someone told me they wanted to play Twilight Imperium, I wouldn't think twice.
On the video game front, I'm playing most of my strategy against AI. I've pretty much "solved" the XCOM series, but I struggle with Phoenix Point. I used to play Civ (3 and 4 back in the day) but I try to avoid it because the "one more turn" problem really is a a thing. I replaced it with incredibly restrained Stellaris play. I love playing that Co-op with my wife, we create some great narrative races and try to dominate the galaxy.
Not a competitive player myself, but my buddies play Age of Empires 2 (Definitive Edition) all the time. Fantastic game.
It's not an rts but a strategy game nonetheless.
Mechabellum is probably my favorite game out right now. It's an autobattler where each turn you buy + upgrade units, acquire battlefield powers, and potentially add special upgrades to your units each turn during a deployment phase before setting them off to fight whatever your opponent did that turn as well.
It's just such a good vibe playing as it lets me enjoy my favorite part of an rts game, watching the units all fight to the death, and makes it the whole goal of the game because I can't analyze why things went the way they did without watching intently.
As I've seen said recently: it gives that rts feel without requiring APM to be great at it.