Real-Time Strategy – TV Tropes

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Real-Time strategy games, also known as RTS games, are a subgenre of strategy games which focuses on construction and control of a fighting force in battle that takes place in real-time. It has an army of tropes all its own.

Debate rages as to what the first originating RTS actually was, the results largely dependent on the age and nationality of the participants, and the definition of RTS (which can overlap with real-time tactics or Turn-Based Strategy). The ZX Spectrum had early claimaints many many moons ago (1984 saw Stonkers and 1987 — Nether Earth); the MSX saw Herzog in the late 80s — but only in Japan; and 1989 saw its sequel Herzog Zwei on the Sega Genesis (Mega Drive) which introduced many of the genre conventions. Herzog Zwei was the Trope Maker that spawned the genre, being the common ancestor of every modern RTS, as well as the Trope Namer (“RTS” was coined in this 1989 interview). It inspired 1992’s Dune II by Westwood Studios (later of Command & Conquer fame), which established the form and the tropes of the RTS which are known to the masses today, making it the Trope Codifier.

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Games in the genre have one or more factions where the players assume the role of a “god” or commander, controlling units and buildings, building a town, creating an army and eventually crushing their enemies into dust using said army. There are four basic elements of the genre: units, buildings, resources and technologies:

  • Units are individual actors that can be given orders, from resource collection to engaging another enemy unit, depending on their class.
  • Buildings are static, faction-owned structures. Most of them have two roles: train units and research technologies. Other buildings influence the faction’s resources, either increasing the population limit or serving as a storage point for collected resources. Depending on the game, what order you construct these buildings in, and how quickly you do so, is an important factor in deciding the outcome of the match.
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  • Technologies are used to give the faction an edge against the enemy factions. Techs are improvements for economy-oriented units/buildings or military-oriented ones, or even the faction as a whole.
  • Resources are used to achieve all of the above goals, and because of its integral importance to the genre, all armies fight for their control as much (if not more) as they fight each other.

Almost all games of this type are based on ground combat on a 2D map, with various terrain and obstacles adding interest to the battlefield. Airborne and seaborne units are sometimes incorporated, but they are seldom realistic in terms of speed and performancenote Almost all aircraft in RTS games can hover, cannot change altitude, and have unlimited fuel and ammo; naval units are subjected to Critical Existence Failure: the only way even heavily weaponized galleons sink is by having all of their HP depleted, even 1 HP is enough to keep them afloat. As for the GUI itself, it always displays the available resources, enemy factions, the minimap with the revealed terrain and the units/buildings the player can see, and if an unit or building is selected, it also displays the commands/orders it can perform. Several games also have different minimap options allowing players to see resources, enemy units, allied/own units, Wild Card units, and many/all of the above at the same time.

Enhancing one’s forces with better equipment and training makes perfect sense, but while a few titles do use plausible terminology for requisitioning new gear, training specialists, retooling factories and deploying the finished products to active forces, most use the peculiar choice of “research” for the process. This gives players the surreal image of scientists doing research on the front lines, making miraculous breakthroughs almost immediately, and then promptly forgetting whatever it was, every single level.

As its name implies, in comparison to its big brother Turn-Based Strategy, the Real Time Strategy genre has players taking action whenever they wish (within the constraints of how often any particular action can be taken). Playtime will continue for other players and entities in the game even if one player sits back and does nothing, rather than breaking up the sequence of play into discrete turns for each player, which brings multiplayer matches down from hours or days to minutes. While this leaves less time for strategizing and encourages fast-paced playstyles, it makes commanders less omniscient, allowing ambushes and distractions to be viable strategies. As for unit pathfinding, unlike other genres such as the First-Person Shooternote Where the player is usually too busy running along a linear path thwarting pre-scripted ambushes to notice, in the RTS genrenote where battles take place in enormous, twisty campaigns and the player is constantly shepherding large numbers of units with a perfect view of their incompetence the tendency of unit AI to unnecessarily bumble around the map in response to choke points and clump together when attacking becomes very obvious; therefore pathfinding is given a high amount of importance, as a game with a weak AI becomes frustrating to play in the “my units are dumb” sense.

The genre also possesses a number of aesthetic conceits, so typical to its presentation that they often confuse even the games’ creatorsnote The first three are probably inherited from tabletop wargames, while the fifth has some appliance exceptions:

Refinements of the genre formula have appeared over the years, and in more modern times these include the addition of high ground bonuses for range and vision, bonus damage for flanking enemy troops, terrain bonuses such as cover and concealment, the organization of small units like infantry and fighter craft into squads or wings that act as one unit, aircraft units that act like aircraft (take off, perform mission, land again), elements from the Real Time Tactics genre where there’s no base building or unit construction and scale is strictly squad-level (units are acquired at the start of each level), units with limited supplies who can expend all their supplies if left in the lurch, persistent troops that are retained throughout a campaign (introducing RPG Elements), Mobile Factories blurring the distinction between buildings and units, and eschewing gathering resources and destroying the enemy’s base in favor of taking and holding positions on the map in order to achieve victory.

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    Basic archetypes of units 

    Basic archetypes of buildings 

A critical part of all RTS games is the base-building and Resource-Gathering element, which is also conducted very rapidly. Buildings are divided in Economic buildings, Military buildings and Research buildings.

Economic buildings

These buildings’ primary purpose is to manage the resources of the faction. They have limited or non-existant combat abilities:

  • The Command/Construction Center: Either constructs buildings itself (especially if in the Command & Conquer series) or builds Peon units. Despite it’s humbleness, this is usually the true Keystone of your force: if you lose it defeat may not be automatic, but unless you can replace it quickly, it may be inevitable.
  • The Resource Storage Building: A building that stores or generates resources, and/or creates/accepts Peons, Workers, or Harvesters. Versions that don’t create worker units are usually placed close to the respective resource it gathers.
    • The Resource Controller: A Resource Building that is specifically built on top of (or nearby) a gatherable resource itself, allowing only your peon/harvester units to use it.
  • The Population Extending Building: A building that incrementally increases the Arbitrary Headcount Limit for units – often handwaved as providing housing or food for them. May also be necessary (as a source of electricity/mana/phlebotinum) for other buildings to function. Sometimes upgradeable to a Defense Turret or Transport.

These buildings’ primary purpose is to manage the resources of the faction. They have limited or non-existant combat abilities:

Military Unit Buildings

These buildings’ purpose is to train the military units that will compose the army that the player will use to crush the enemy factions. Some of them can also overlap with Research building, especially if the techs they contain are related to the units they train:

  • The Barracks: Builds the basic infantry units and sometimes handles unit-specific upgrades.
  • The Stable/Vehicle Factory: Builds scout, siege, and artillery units.
  • The Naval Building: Builds and repairs naval units.
  • The Aircraft Factory: Builds, upgrades, and potentially rearms air units. Often only supports a limited number of aircraft at a time, usually between one and four.
  • The Science Factory: Trains support units such as healers and transport units.
  • The Defense Turrets: A small building with a mounted weapon. Usually varies between anti-infanty, anti-armor, and anti-air.
  • The Superweapon: A building that generates an unlimited-range or near-unlimited-range attack that can blow large holes in an army or base, if not wipe it off the map completely. Typically, only one can be built at a time. If not, there’s a chance the game can become a Turtle-fest as players hide behind their defenses, build a dozen or so Superweapons, and try to wipe out the enemy base in a cataclysmic orgy of Nuclear fire, Kill Sat Beam Spam, Negative Space Wedgies, or whatever is available to that side.
    • The Anti-Superweapon: A defensive building specifically designed to defeat the Superweapon and prevent it from being used against a specific area. Usually cheaper and faster to build than the Superweapon. Intended to discourage the above behaviour, forcing conventional conflict and encouraging faster battle resolution. Often still vulnerable to a Spam Attack.

These buildings’ purpose is to train the military units that will compose the army that the player will use to crush the enemy factions. Some of them can also overlap with Research building, especially if the techs they contain are related to the units they train:

Research Buildings

These buildings are used to research technologies in order to give the faction an edge against the enemy factions.

  • The Tech Building: A building whose main purpose is to advance the Tech Tree and upgrade units. Usually has to be built before you can build other Research Buildings or advanced unit buildings.
  • The Specialized Tech Building: A research building whose techs are monofocused: you have economic tech buildings (The University), military tech buildings (The Arsenal) and…
  • The Advanced Tech Building: Like the first one, but comes later in the game, or is expanded from the original. Needed for accessing even more advanced stuff like Elite Units or Superweapons.

These buildings are used to research technologies in order to give the faction an edge against the enemy factions.

Neutral Buildings

These buildings aren’t faction-oriented, but anyone can claim them and train unique units and research unique techs.

  • The Saloon: A Bad-Guy Bar. Hosts mercenary units that can be bought with a specific, valuable resource, usually gold. Cannot be damaged.
    • The Village: A subclass of the above. A settlement or tribe located in the middle of the map. Contains a building place for a specific building to be built so an alliance can be made with these natives. Unlike the Saloon, the faction building in this settlement can be destroyed.
  • The Shop: Like the Saloon, this building can’t be damaged, and its contents can be bought with a specific resource. What differences the Shop from the Saloon is that instead of units, it sells technologies.
  • The Outpost: A watchtower which clears the Fo V for the unit that controls it. Some can even function as defense points for the team thet controls it.
  • The Discovery Site: Often found in specific gametypes of specific games, these are the positions over which players fight. Controlling the highest amount of these for a certain period of time is the victory condition for these Domination-style gametypes.

These buildings aren’t faction-oriented, but anyone can claim them and train unique units and research unique techs.

    Basic archetypes of resources 

  • Population: Most RTS games have an Arbitrary Head Count Limit, which is represented by this resource. Can be extended with Population Extender Buildings (Pylons).
  • Tree: In games where wood is a collectible resource, wood is usually collected from trees.
  • Mine: In games with mineral collectible resources, gatherer units are sent to these mines. They usually are displayed with a stack of the aforementioned resource, if not with a mine entrance.
  • Gas: In games where gas can be collected, geyser holes act as the gas collection spot.
  • Animals: In games where food can be collected from hunting animals, across the map there will be plenty of creatures from where to harvest food. Animals can be found either in the wild (with all parties fighting for them), or can be domesticated. In games with support for water maps, fish colonies can also be harvested for food.
  • Other food sources: Food can also be collected from other sources such as forage bushes.
  • Resource box: Usually obtained via research, resource boxes are faction-specific and can contain any type of resources in a finite amount. Boxes can also be found in the wild and any faction can acquire them.
  • Mana: Spellcasting units, hero units, and units that use special abilities have their own resource to manage, in the form of a separate energy bar. Abilities draw power from this bar, which is usually rechargeable.

The third and most important element of the genre are the resources. Without them you just can’t build a base, train an army and squash the opposition into fine pasta. Therefore, RTS matches have at least one battle for resources at some part of the map. It’s also common to have a bunch of initial resources near the base. Some of the most recognizable resource sources are:

For common tropes, see Strategy Game Tropes. Compare Strategy RPG. See also Real-Time with Pause for a slightly different approach (may also have variable time scale). The Multiplayer Online Battle Arena genre came out of Real-Time Strategy genre and utilizes a similar camera but with much smaller scope that limits you to one character (and occasionally other units depending on the game’s option for it but largely most players will be using one unit) supporting waves of weaker units trying to bring down the enemy’s base. See its own page for more information.

Games in this genre:

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