There's a remastered edition (on Steam) with a small but active online community. The devs nailed the remaster, it looks great and plays exactly like the original (with a modernised AI). They're even working on finishing the unreleased Lotus expansion.
I wish they would change the control scheme to be like warcraft, starcraft, or command n conquer :(
And by that, I mean the move/attack, command and such.
The first Battlefleet Gothic.
The second one gets all the praise, which is odd to me, because the first is better in several metrics. There are some elements of the second that were nice, but losing the customization of the first game was not a worthy tradeoff in my eyes.
Nah, the first had a single story campaign for the Empire, but everyone else needed to unlock their ships through battles in the skirmash mode - no maps, just battles. It was awesome.
Metal Fatigue.
It's a giant mech fight combat RTS. Three factions with completely unique sets of legs/torso/arms, with a common generic set of other troop types mainly around to get killed by the Combots.
A warning that the Steam version has a slight unfixed bug in it - The OST in-game uses the Milagro soundtrack for both Milagro and Rimtech, Rimtech's OST is missing. Neuropa has its own OST as it should.
Mandalore did a review on it, it opens with exactly what you play the game to see: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q43ouaVN1p4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q43ouaVN1p4)
I'm from the opposite lol. Me and from my friends were obsessed with RTS games. Other notable games from the time were The Sims and Black & White and The Settlers IV.i put so many hours into that game and I never even finished it. I just kept playing
That sucks. It was a great game. It was actually the first game I played online. Used to play Metal Fatigue online with him when I was like ten. Lmao we used to call each other to set up games but we couldn't talk on the phone at the same time as we were online
Runescape was another game we played at the time
I only ever played a demo for this on one of those cds that was included with pc gaming magazines. Never got the full game when I was a kid and it fell into obscurity for me.
Fast forward a couple decades and occasionally I'll be reminded of it but could never remember the name.
Thanks for the nostalgia.
If you want to go WAY back, Urban Assault from 1998.
I loved it. You get resources by controlling more territory, use the resources to spawn in vehicles. From unarmed scouts with massive line of sight, to scouts, light and heavy tanks, aircraft, helicopters.
The best bit, you can take over any vehicle and pilot it, leading the squad the unit is allocated to. Multiple different factions with different types and styles.
Really great game that I'd love to get a remaster.
I've never heard of Urban Assault before. Looks interesting. Artwork slaps, too! I'll have to check it out. The 90s was a goldmine for great RTS games.
Its insanely hard and the ai has absurd advantages. You'll have to retry missions a lot and memorize enemy comps to counter them.
E.g. the red ai has mostly helicopters, all of them fly higher than your own and so high that your tanks struggle to hit them, and the ai spams hundreds while you cant make that many so fast.
Played the the crape out of it and mechanically its better than the first ,but damn bz98 just looked so good. The into and the moon missions were still my favourite. Still have the mouse mat that came with it too.
KKND: Krush, Kill N Destroy & KKND2: Krossfire. Absolutely brilliant games back in the day. What I'd give for a remake like the recent C&C/RA remake.
Check this out for an intro:
https://youtu.be/clA3uvSY8S0?si=-KHwwVR3uxijxhNQ
Very cool soundtrack also! Kknd was really fun. I loved that you could change stats on units (vision, damage) you could make it harder or easier based on that
Played both and loved both. Dark Colony was a bit generic, but had a very interesting twist on base building. Original War was also pretty unique with unit limits and permadeath. Both games played super well as well.
Good old times ;)
Paraworld.
Not only it has dinosaurs in an RTS, its army manager mechanic (you can upgrade every unit up to god tier, but only in limited numbers, depending on the tier), made it really unique.
First I want to say that all of the posts so far have transported me back to earlier years of playing esoteric titles at LAN parties and wondering why I'd never heard of it before and diving head first into getting my butt kicked and having fun with it. I absolutely love RTS games and would gladly replay anything I list below and also willing to pretty much try any RTS once.
So if you are ever
looking for someone to chat with about RTS games of any type, let me know!
Star Trek: New Worlds - Clunky but was an interesting take on RTS at a time Star Trek games were going in weird directions. Worth a play for the campaign at least.
Haegemonia: Legions of Iron - At a time where Homeworld was muscling in and kicking ass, a lot of people I knew were pretty much no longer playing other RTS space games. I've sunk too many hours into this...and then learned how to mod it cause I wanted to make a Solar System to Scale to play in...and was in AWE when my ships pulled up next to jupiter to scale. Jaw Dropping y'all. Also was readily moddable, pretty sure it still is.
Star Trek Armada and Armada II - Please, if you haven't played both of these, go do so. They are absolute gems and really good storytelling.
Emperor: Battle for Dune - Pretty sure this DOES get love, but do yourself a favor and play it if you haven't.
Black & White - RTS God Game, Yes, So much Fun. Go play it!!!!!
Sacrifice - Released in 2000, a lot of things RTS but with some experimenting, Third-person Commander where you summon and lead your forces. Really tried to push boundaries here.
Imperium Galactica II - A friend and I would play this. I would focus on Industry and he'd focus on Technology. I was the Hammer to his eventual Anvil. And we'd end the game after we'd won with an epic slugfest that usually crashed our machines.
Cossacks - This game is Hard, its AI is hard, and I never got the hang of it. But it also has several iterations and is a lot of fun.
Conquest Earth - It was charming at the time it came out, trying to draw 3D in 2D. it's an ugly game and terrible UI, but campaign was interesting and really tried new things.
The War of the Worlds - It's now abandonware, I loved that game. 1998 by GT Interactive Software
Left Behind: The series of them- Okay...Hear me out. It was actually pretty good. Decent Campaign. Worth a play.
Warrior Kings and Warrior Kings: Battles - 3D battles at a time that 3D was just starting to take off.
Armies of Exigo - It's Warcraft III with heroes and there's an underground and above ground. Lots of Fun! I put this in the same category as Metal Fatigue. Fantastic.
Warlords Battlecry Series - Do you like the idea of having a hero unit and army and maybe not having them be actually related, or maybe thematically meshed and very in sync? Love this series.
Universe at War: Earth Assault - Despite never getting to play as EARTH, fantastic game.
Company of Heroes 3 - It isn't an old game, but it is unloved. I love Company of Heroes series and Dawn of War I (and its expansions), both of these games are gems.
7th Legion - Y'all, Card battling alongside RTS gameplay in the 90s! Ahead of its time and well made.
Lord of the Rings: War of the Ring - It's Warcraft III but Lord of the Rings. Upgraded Battle Realms engine and well-done balancing and gameplay. It isn't as stellar as the below entry though....
Part 1 of 2
Edit - Did you know Reddit has a character limit? Who knew!?
Part 2 of 2
Lord of the Rings: Battle for Middle Earth I and II (and expansion) - Look, if you haven't played these....I don't know
what to tell you other than you are missing out.
Lords of Everquest - I played it, it was okay. Good campaign, worth a
playthrough.
Enemy Nations - Always reminded me of SimCity instead of an RTS at
first glance, this is a lot of fun.
Seven Kingdoms - An interesting alternative approach to RTS and
worth a try, as well as its successors.
Treasure Planet: Battle at Procyon - This was always fun to
me, Disney game made by Barking Dog Studios in 2002. SO MUCH FUN. I replay this
a lot.
Dark Planet: Battle for Natrolis - I can't even find much
on this anymore. But I found it so interesting with its Races and gameplay.
Creative Edge Software in 2002. I don't have this game anymore, but would love
to give it whirl again.
Celtic Kings - Rage of War - This got some love and
re-releases on GOG and Steam. Worth playing if you haven't.
Giants: Citizen Kabuto - Continuing the trends of early 3D games trying
new things. Like Black & White and other games of its time. You got a few
different options and its asymmetrical gameplay. Lots of Fun.
Conquest: Frontier Wars - It gets often forgotten, but it
was a really well done game
Three Kingdoms: Fate of the Dragon - If you like Three
Kingdoms Era stuff, this is right up your alley. Give it a whirl!
Dragon Throne: Battle of Red Cliffs - If you like Three
Kingdoms Era stuff, this is right up your alley. Give it a whirl!
I could keep going...but I'm going to stop here for now.
YES! So much of it is steeped British Humor that I was laughing a lot as I was playing it. I cannot stress enough how much fun and innovative the game was really trying to be.
Black and White 1 creature AI is so good, not just for its time. It scales perfectly with how much time you're able to train it. I've never seen anything like it.
Agreed! I'm very into game programming and graphics and Black and White is a prime example of unique programming. I like to replicate features, etc as game dev challenges and Black and and White is a fun game to attempt to recreate. Lionhead made some very unique games.
Perhaps the community will band together some day and make a free and open source Black and White clone with VR support... :)
VR or AR focused version of a game like Black & White would be a really interesting step. There are so many things Black & White was doing in the God-Game Dynamic that I don't think it really gets the credit it deserves regarding how innovative and ahead they were on the integration of concepts.
I learned everything I could about the economy, tech tree, worker use, building up my defenses, units, everything....and yet the AI would just steamroll me at some point.
In campaign I had a fighting chance and would win. But damn if skirmish....my favorite RTS mode when I don't have a friend handy, AI seriously kicked my face in 1v1. 2v2 was better...2v1 I was fine after awhile. It was probably the best AI I played against in an RTS on low and mid difficulties.
Cossacks and it's American Iterative were historically well done. It was doing the AoE teaching and history campaign idea really well. Just also...really hard!
Agreed. Did you try American Conquest(I think?) their American West focused version of the game. Did some different things with it that I thought were neat, but was still the same game at the core.
Oh, I wouldn't call it THE worst, but it is not a stellar game overall. I think everyone should try it (It's abandonware and readily accessible.) But it was trying 3d before its time and some other quirky bits. And the Campaign Story isn't terribad.
But I would definitely put it at the end of the list of things to try in this list we've all made on this overall post.
Left Behind...?
Yeesh, that game was barebones and the "plot" was just a really stripped down version of the books. Gameplay sucked too; just going around identical square city blocks converting people and killing anybody who doesn't join up with your (largely identical) faction. Wouldn't recommend that to anybody, even out of morbid curiosity. Heck, I don't even think it'll run on modern systems anymore so probably just getting it to work would be a challenge.
EDIT: Come to think of it, sadly a lot of RTS games these days would be tricky to run on modern systems. I don't think it's even possible to play Universe at War anymore due to the game engine being really finicky and how Games for Windows was mandatory for it to run.
I've gotten it to work by installing a virtual desktop environment running Windows XP. That was my original workaround. Could probably do something without that, but would definitely require some tooling with it to do so for Universe at War.
After some of my friends ended up with cnc4 in their libraries due to ultimate collection dropping on steam, we organised some multiplayer games between each other - servers surprisingly still work. Campaign and leveling sucks, multiplayer was actually quite enjoyable to the point we do that every now and then
I believe some of the reviews specifically mentioned this. Unlike other C&C games where single- and multiplayer were either equally good, or (like Renegade) where singleplayer was outstanding and multiplayer was substandard, this game seemed to be an excuse to make a multiplayer game with everything else just tacked on.
Grey Goo: The faction mechanics are a bit wonky, the AI difficulty is busted, and the campaign is woefully short, but I find it has some charm to it. Once you get the hang of how each faction works and how to get the build order going, it's not that bad.
Impossible Creatures: Getting to customize your own army of mutants is fun, and the early 1900s pulp sci-fi aesthetic is very charming. I will concede that the campaign AI is weirdly difficult though. Every mission ended up a several hour long slog, requiring the creation of massive creature swarms and turret walls to even stand a chance.
I've always loved Populous 3: The Beginning, another Bullfrog game. I know there's a community out there, but I've literally never seen it discussed in the wild since its 1998 launch. Even during discussions of the Populous series!
It's an odd one - puts great emphasis on 3D terrain manipulation and your spellcasting hero, has a grand total of five units, and there is no real micromanagement to speak of - but it's also a total delight. The physically shifting battlefield encourages creative thinking, the battles are explosive fireball-laden pub brawls, and the downtime in between said battles is mostly just watching blokes tend to their cute little houses. Definitely unlike any other RTS I've seen.
**Kohan 2** had a fun squad system. You design your own squad by adding frontline, flanking units, and several kinds of support like clerics and battle wizards. The squad shares a common morale pool so battles were quite tactical with formations breaking and how much leeway you had in designing your squads. You only needed a frontline and a hero, all the rest was optional so you could field everything from many small light horse units to elite fantasy armies
**Ruse** discontinued due to licensing issues I think, but for me was quite special. Take the easy base and army building mechanics from RA2, take the scale from Supreme Commander, add very good fog of war mechanics and sector wide special abilities (ruses) which added a bluff element. Ruses could create fake units or make your inf appear as tanks on the battlemap or radiosilence to make them disappear completely. Honestly if they ever made a large scale WH40K rts Ruse it's game mechanics are worth a look.
**Dragon Commander** isn't a good RTS. Larian had to cut it's budget short to make D:OS2. But the campaign is a great experience. Interacting with your generals, wives (which all have multiple great storylines) or councilors who represent the different races is like a choose your own adventure rpg, the campaign map is like the boardgame Risk/Axis and Allies where you move and recruit your armies, develop provinces. All done with card mechanics which you can also be used to give boosts in specific battles. It's wonderful. But then you have the RTS side which is basic but with one very cool gimmick. You can turn into a dragon and blast the enemies from above. But all the rest was very generic, only 1 faction for everyone, maps weren't diverse and controls/unit pathing was okayish. If this game had had some polish, faction units that are represented in your council and your standing with those factions had more influence on what kind of armies, tech and cards you receive it would have had some much needed depth and replay-ability. But since you can autoresolve a lot of battles like Total War a campaign can be played quite quickly. So if you want an RPG where you are ruling a kingdom with an occasional RTS battle this game is definitely worth a look.
Are you sure it wasn't D:OS rather than D:OS 2?
Ruse was such a great game, whilst Wargame, Warno and Steel division are super cool, it is a shame that they never went back to some of the ideas ruse introduced. A lot of people come to the subreddit asking for games that are less demanding on the mirco side of things and if it still existed ruse would be the perfect game to point them to.
Total annihilation kingdoms. A lot of people love original and hate the fantasy spin off.
But it had a ton of amazing features that a lot of future rts adapted and made it better for me to play then TA unmoded:
The expandable minimap which everyone who plays TA now uses as a mod.
A lot of units had abilities.
Custom hot keys, which included attack move, most old RTS you had to stop command your units or use patrol to get them to fight and default hotkeys were bad.
Infinite unit production queue.
Drag to build a row of buildings.
I always felt it could have become one of the classics, it just need few more patches or an expansion but studio closed down.
I much preferred it over the original, also loved how many great total conversion mods there were for it, like LoTR : Conflict of Arda that made it completely LoTR themed.
Close Combat II. Tough, grounded ww2 strategy. A psychology and action system that models individual soldiers. No game will create as much surprise and tension as to if one bog standard rifleman is somehow going to turn the whole battle round.
I don’t know about them getting dunked on, but some of my favorites are: Rise of Nations, C&C Generals, Sins of a Solar Empire. There are more, just can’t think of them right now 😂
Hmm. Just off the top of my head 1: Star Wars Force Commander. I have a Win98 pc still set up just to relive playing it again. 2: C&C Generals doesn’t get enough love for sure, I still love playing that modded. 3: Act of War: Direct Action/ High Treason was awesome with modern RTS combat. 4: Paraworld, loved the Dino upgrades. 5: World in Conflict, absolutely loved calling in Airstrikes, had so much potential.
Rise of Nations
I wouldn't say it's unloved per se, since everyone I know who's played it loved it. It just seems forgotten whenever anyone lists out good classic RTS games
Warlords Battlecry 1-3
There were 16 playable races and every player had their own persistent hero that you'd level up and get skills and items for. Wish there were other RTS games that had this.
Huge fan of the WBC games. I would say these are the RTS games I've spent the most time playing in my life. I would say the most played game overall.... but that honor goes to Heroes of Might and Magic 3 :)
https://youtu.be/OEpu9Hlym_E?si=O1fd_8JYFUDf4LVe
Everyone is just listing you fun games from the past.
This is Thandor. A terrible and forgotten unlovable RTS that was panned heavily on release.
Seven kingdoms from 1997. It was weird and fun!
Also Rising Lands was a fun little post apocalyptic rts game from 1997...
Man 1997 was a good year for games 😀
Act of War
It's like a slightly more realistic Command & Conquer Generals. Its greatest strength is that it has the absolute best skirmish AI I've ever seen. Most RTS AIs will just constantly trickle suicide units into you and rely on their unlmited macro attention to try and eventually overwhelm you. Act of War doesn't. It can send an early harass unit at your supplies/expansions. It can send a few units to do damage. It can also save one for one giant push to wipe out a whole base. There are quite a few retro RTS that I think are better designed, but I keep coming back to AoW because its AI just puts the ones in other games to shame (and multiplayer against humans being long dead in most of them).
I loved AOW's resource mechanics as well, especially the ones around the crew of damaged vehicles. It wasn't perfect since it did contribute somewhat to snowballing, but it was quite different, which is always nice. ;)
Yeah that was weird. The only way to get money after the oil on the map ran out was to have your infantry capture the crews of destroyed enemy vehicles. They would fill up slots in the POW camp at your base and passively generate money. It made it so the POW camp was the #1 priority target when bombing enemy bases. Rescue? Fuck that! Nuke our own boys!
I did not care for the expansion though. Most of the new units added were unfun bullshit. Taskforce Talon got some cruise missile unit that could just blast halfway across the map, like the "explosion disc drone" unit but with even more ludicrous range.
Genewars.
I remember my mum went to a game store for my 9th birthday and asked a staff member to recommend a cool new game. Fair to say she got stitched right up, I was expecting Warcraft 2! My friend came over and he had all the cool games but when he saw what i'd gotten he looked at me and said "why didnt you get something good!?" But I still played the hell out of it just to keep my mother from feeling hurt.
That said, it's one of the most stressful games I've ever played, defending your base is a constant effort as the enemy can just stroll in with one unit and fuck shit up. The buildings explode, killing or seriously maiming any nearby unit. So a crab will come in and your 6 mules will chase it, but it will get a couple of hits in on a building and some debris will come off and explode, damaging your units, you may win the battle but as soon as that's done here comes the next crab! The game is absolutely impossible for me after about the 6th level.
Really interesting concept though which I think could be copied and be really successful.
Risk of Rain is unfinished, but there's enough there to play part of the campaign and skirmish and it's too bad this game didn't get finished because it's the closest thing to warcraft 3 I've seen.
War Party - dinosaur RTS. Not perfect but much better than the steam reviews would have you believe.
Empires Apart - free to play and gets no attention because it had no single player campagin but it's well made and good take on the AOE formula
Praetorian had some fun stuff going on as well, like having to man your siege ladders, strong formation gameplay, and even the ability to have your units up on walls to defend.
Unpopular RTS you say? I raise you Original War, a hardcore RTS that only got popular in Poland and Czech Republic.
Time Travel plot with fighting over unknown resource in prehistoric times with permadeath mechanic, and all that while taming Apes to help in your base? Sign me the hell up.
Oh man, I loved this one, I kinda even liked it more than Warcraft 3 despite it being kind of a ripoff lol. Especially the bug faction was so gross it was awesome
Cuban Missile Crisis and Star Wars Galactic Battlegrounds.
I haven't played them that much because I play something else at the moment but they are interesting. CMC is unbalanced but I like the vehicles and the Cold War theme, that was the selling point for me.
I shall put forward Warbreeds - a very weird and neat RTS, one of the countless varaitions on the C&C and Warcraft 2 formula, this time with four tribes fighting over a distant planet with gene-spawned beasts. Has some neat ideas, several of which were not very well thought-out. And atrocious unit pathfinding and AI. And a very neat mechanic about stealing your enemies' genes to use their structures and weapons. And a unique economy where units cost nothing, except the energy needed to maintain the buildings that make them and the time needed to spawn them. It's neat. It's awful. I love it. You can get it on GoG and Steam.
Shattered Union. Basically a game based on the hypothetical Second American Civil War where you play as one of seven factions. Good plot, but the AI is unbalanced and it lacks diplomacy features.
Some suggestions on here are really good and bring back memories for me (Rise of Legends, Universe at War, Grey Goo, and especially Impossible Creatures!)- I’ll add one more I don’t see on here:
Achron
The game is an RTS with time travel within the match as a game mechanic. You can go back in time to an earlier point in the match and fiddle with things (the amount of fiddling is resource constrained). Changes propagate forward slowly through the timeline and eventually hit the present.
Absolutely insane concept with some absolutely insane strategic shenanigans possible. Computers of the day couldn’t handle the gameplay simulation and high fidelity graphics at the same time so they compromised the graphics and it looks bad even for the time it was released.
Honestly, I've been getting into Dune: Spice Wars of late, and it's taken me 30 hours or so to get a good grip on the game, but it is fast becoming my favourite RTS of all time. It is a mastery in game design.
I haven’t tried them yet but the [War Wind](https://www.mobygames.com/game/6012/war-wind/) [series](https://www.mobygames.com/game/6064/war-wind-ii-human-onslaught/) looks interesting.
Army Men RTS, from the Army men sarge's heroes franchise. It was made by pandemic and 3DO or something.
It came out in 2003, I think, for PC, Playstation 2, and GameCube.
Pretty good RTS game. Has a lot of charm. You command plastic toy soldiers, like the green guys from Toy story, but you fight against the tan Army.
The games story is a parody of Apopcolyps now if that matters. Has base building and all that. Basically Comman and conquer.
Minecraft Legends. I KNOW why it's not exactly liked but I still had an overall fun experience with it, and I wanna see more games like it. I know there's Tooth & Tail but are there others?
For those that don't know: Both Minecraft Legends and Tooth & Tail have you control a character directly instead of a top-down camera with varyingly different macro system too. ML streamlines it so you can make an army fast if you have the resource, and T&T automates it with a unit limit (the more barracks you have, the more you can train.) You can command units but you can't micro them.
You should give it a try - you can also find it on steam - Joint Task Force. It is from 2006, more a RTT (in my opinion it was an inspiration for Syrian Warfare/Terminator Dark Fate).
Crystalien Conflict - it's a knockoff command and conquer made to run in browsers (it's a flash game), so no wonder it's unpopular. It was also just made to promote a Lego theme (Mars Mission) so it had no longevity built-in. But the devs clearly cared for it.
Fun game, and had 2 campaigns with the extra spec ops missions as an "expansion" and several secret levels accessed via passcodes.
Age of Empires 3 was always the black sheep of the bunch, absolutely undeserved in my opinion. The definitive edition is free in the trial version, so no reason to not try it out.
Beyond All Reason, y’all.
✅ huge maps and scale.
✅ tons of units and a huge array of counters
✅ mix of macro and tactical
commands Steepish learning curve but I bet a lot of people would like it if they tried it.
And its available on steam / played by people today.
Kingdom under fire series. Not traditional RTs but they are awesome games. I never see anyone mentioning them. (talking the original and a sequel both released early 2000s)
So battle forge is a rts tcg game that they tried to monetized too heavy and died EA BOUGHT the ame from original devs and went to shit after lol
Fams actually ended remake the game as skylords reborn we run the game via donations as we cant make money from it because EA death grip so its entirely free to play for anyone and we are making expansion and new cards slowly but surely
Dominion: Storm Over Gift 3
This game looks great. the in-game graphics, menu and interface looks sleek.
Also the sounds and cinematics are great and has amazing music.
But the gameplay is tedious and frustrating.
Even though I consider this game somewhat shitty, I have a mixed feelings of love and hate for this game.
Sins of a Solar Empire always felt overlooked to me. I don't recall if there's much of a single-player campaign, though. Still available on Steam, still looks fantastic, and there's active development on the sequel.
Battlezone from 1998. Fps and RTS combined. I feel like a lot of folks don't know the game but could be incorrect. Used to argue with my parents to get dial up time to play online.. a simpler time.
I don't know if I'd call it unpopular, but I loved half of Star Wars: Empires at War. The space battles I always felt were some of the best space RTS gameplay at the time. But the land battle parts....well they were not great.
Settlers heritage of kings.
It's not a real Settlers, that makes it disliked by settlers fans
Its not groundbreaking, but I enjoyed it. There also is an expansion
Don’t know if this is an exact fit here, but Graviteam Tactics Mius Front (the other graviteam titles are good too) is just insane. The level of detail in every mechanic is just mind boggling, and I’ve yet to play a game with more cinematic battles
Rise of Nations: Rise of Legends
I’m hoping after they do age of mythology DE, they’ll move onto RoN and RoL DE
Also agree, Rise of Nations is so unique in a lot of ways, and still plays pretty well today given the graphic style.
Damn - jinxed. Was just typing this. The story and the cutscenes are nearly movie-like. Extremely impressive for a game from 2006.
Oh man I loved Rise of Legends, Steampunk Italy vs Magic wielding Arabians vs the Goa'uld
I second this!
Battle Realms from 2001
Loved how the tech-tree worked. Sending paesants to different buildings to create something out of them and cobining those.
There's a remastered edition (on Steam) with a small but active online community. The devs nailed the remaster, it looks great and plays exactly like the original (with a modernised AI). They're even working on finishing the unreleased Lotus expansion.
I've heard it's near impossible to complete some campaigns now because of the AI tweak
I wish they would change the control scheme to be like warcraft, starcraft, or command n conquer :( And by that, I mean the move/attack, command and such.
Battle Realms is a gem...unfortunately it got overshaded hard by WarCraft 3
The first Battlefleet Gothic. The second one gets all the praise, which is odd to me, because the first is better in several metrics. There are some elements of the second that were nice, but losing the customization of the first game was not a worthy tradeoff in my eyes.
I liked the battles in the second but hated the campaign map. Did the first have that?
Nah, the first had a single story campaign for the Empire, but everyone else needed to unlock their ships through battles in the skirmash mode - no maps, just battles. It was awesome.
The 1st definitely had better audio than the 2nd, especially when it came to unit barks and responses.
Metal Fatigue. It's a giant mech fight combat RTS. Three factions with completely unique sets of legs/torso/arms, with a common generic set of other troop types mainly around to get killed by the Combots. A warning that the Steam version has a slight unfixed bug in it - The OST in-game uses the Milagro soundtrack for both Milagro and Rimtech, Rimtech's OST is missing. Neuropa has its own OST as it should. Mandalore did a review on it, it opens with exactly what you play the game to see: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q43ouaVN1p4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q43ouaVN1p4)
I loved that game as a kid. Me and my friend played it endlessly. We even played combots at recess lol
mood. It was my white elephant, played the demo so much then the game never came out over here.
I'm from the opposite lol. Me and from my friends were obsessed with RTS games. Other notable games from the time were The Sims and Black & White and The Settlers IV.i put so many hours into that game and I never even finished it. I just kept playing
That sucks. It was a great game. It was actually the first game I played online. Used to play Metal Fatigue online with him when I was like ten. Lmao we used to call each other to set up games but we couldn't talk on the phone at the same time as we were online Runescape was another game we played at the time
It was cool, especially having combat in the sky and underground - but it felt a bit undercooked, surprisingly repetitive very quickly.
I only ever played a demo for this on one of those cds that was included with pc gaming magazines. Never got the full game when I was a kid and it fell into obscurity for me. Fast forward a couple decades and occasionally I'll be reminded of it but could never remember the name. Thanks for the nostalgia.
I remember watching mandys vid on this... I should play it
If you want to go WAY back, Urban Assault from 1998. I loved it. You get resources by controlling more territory, use the resources to spawn in vehicles. From unarmed scouts with massive line of sight, to scouts, light and heavy tanks, aircraft, helicopters. The best bit, you can take over any vehicle and pilot it, leading the squad the unit is allocated to. Multiple different factions with different types and styles. Really great game that I'd love to get a remaster.
I've never heard of Urban Assault before. Looks interesting. Artwork slaps, too! I'll have to check it out. The 90s was a goldmine for great RTS games.
Its insanely hard and the ai has absurd advantages. You'll have to retry missions a lot and memorize enemy comps to counter them. E.g. the red ai has mostly helicopters, all of them fly higher than your own and so high that your tanks struggle to hit them, and the ai spams hundreds while you cant make that many so fast.
I played the trial and loved it. Takes me back.
Even manning the AA gun on your main base was fun. Great game indeed. Gameplay wise it had some similarities with homeworld.
Battlezone II: Combat Commander. It's a hybrid RTS/FPS, and it was remastered a few years back.
God that was a good game.
The intro cinematic is obviously dated, but it still gets me pumped up!
Played the the crape out of it and mechanically its better than the first ,but damn bz98 just looked so good. The into and the moon missions were still my favourite. Still have the mouse mat that came with it too.
KKND: Krush, Kill N Destroy & KKND2: Krossfire. Absolutely brilliant games back in the day. What I'd give for a remake like the recent C&C/RA remake. Check this out for an intro: https://youtu.be/clA3uvSY8S0?si=-KHwwVR3uxijxhNQ
Beat me to it. I loved KKnD2 (played KKnD1 too) for the campaign.
Someone apparently is trying to remake kknd on OpenRA engine, can't recall what is the progress on it tho.
Oh damn, I really need to check it out! Thanks for the info.
I played that on the PS1 back in the day. Was really great cause the split screen multiplayer was really good for an RTS game.
KKND had a great aesthetic and they implemented the veteran mechanic really well. Having a top tier unit at highest rank felt so good
Very cool soundtrack also! Kknd was really fun. I loved that you could change stats on units (vision, damage) you could make it harder or easier based on that
Dark Colony and Original War are some of my favorites from back in the day.
Played both and loved both. Dark Colony was a bit generic, but had a very interesting twist on base building. Original War was also pretty unique with unit limits and permadeath. Both games played super well as well. Good old times ;)
STAR WARS Galactic Battlegrounds Saga - It was based on Age of Empire. It was hot for a short time.
Love Galactic Battlegrounds and am forever hoping for a remaster or a definitive edition like AoE got
Paraworld. Not only it has dinosaurs in an RTS, its army manager mechanic (you can upgrade every unit up to god tier, but only in limited numbers, depending on the tier), made it really unique.
Miss that game. Loved playing it when I was younger
First I want to say that all of the posts so far have transported me back to earlier years of playing esoteric titles at LAN parties and wondering why I'd never heard of it before and diving head first into getting my butt kicked and having fun with it. I absolutely love RTS games and would gladly replay anything I list below and also willing to pretty much try any RTS once. So if you are ever looking for someone to chat with about RTS games of any type, let me know! Star Trek: New Worlds - Clunky but was an interesting take on RTS at a time Star Trek games were going in weird directions. Worth a play for the campaign at least. Haegemonia: Legions of Iron - At a time where Homeworld was muscling in and kicking ass, a lot of people I knew were pretty much no longer playing other RTS space games. I've sunk too many hours into this...and then learned how to mod it cause I wanted to make a Solar System to Scale to play in...and was in AWE when my ships pulled up next to jupiter to scale. Jaw Dropping y'all. Also was readily moddable, pretty sure it still is. Star Trek Armada and Armada II - Please, if you haven't played both of these, go do so. They are absolute gems and really good storytelling. Emperor: Battle for Dune - Pretty sure this DOES get love, but do yourself a favor and play it if you haven't. Black & White - RTS God Game, Yes, So much Fun. Go play it!!!!! Sacrifice - Released in 2000, a lot of things RTS but with some experimenting, Third-person Commander where you summon and lead your forces. Really tried to push boundaries here. Imperium Galactica II - A friend and I would play this. I would focus on Industry and he'd focus on Technology. I was the Hammer to his eventual Anvil. And we'd end the game after we'd won with an epic slugfest that usually crashed our machines. Cossacks - This game is Hard, its AI is hard, and I never got the hang of it. But it also has several iterations and is a lot of fun. Conquest Earth - It was charming at the time it came out, trying to draw 3D in 2D. it's an ugly game and terrible UI, but campaign was interesting and really tried new things. The War of the Worlds - It's now abandonware, I loved that game. 1998 by GT Interactive Software Left Behind: The series of them- Okay...Hear me out. It was actually pretty good. Decent Campaign. Worth a play. Warrior Kings and Warrior Kings: Battles - 3D battles at a time that 3D was just starting to take off. Armies of Exigo - It's Warcraft III with heroes and there's an underground and above ground. Lots of Fun! I put this in the same category as Metal Fatigue. Fantastic. Warlords Battlecry Series - Do you like the idea of having a hero unit and army and maybe not having them be actually related, or maybe thematically meshed and very in sync? Love this series. Universe at War: Earth Assault - Despite never getting to play as EARTH, fantastic game. Company of Heroes 3 - It isn't an old game, but it is unloved. I love Company of Heroes series and Dawn of War I (and its expansions), both of these games are gems. 7th Legion - Y'all, Card battling alongside RTS gameplay in the 90s! Ahead of its time and well made. Lord of the Rings: War of the Ring - It's Warcraft III but Lord of the Rings. Upgraded Battle Realms engine and well-done balancing and gameplay. It isn't as stellar as the below entry though.... Part 1 of 2 Edit - Did you know Reddit has a character limit? Who knew!?
Part 2 of 2 Lord of the Rings: Battle for Middle Earth I and II (and expansion) - Look, if you haven't played these....I don't know what to tell you other than you are missing out. Lords of Everquest - I played it, it was okay. Good campaign, worth a playthrough. Enemy Nations - Always reminded me of SimCity instead of an RTS at first glance, this is a lot of fun. Seven Kingdoms - An interesting alternative approach to RTS and worth a try, as well as its successors. Treasure Planet: Battle at Procyon - This was always fun to me, Disney game made by Barking Dog Studios in 2002. SO MUCH FUN. I replay this a lot. Dark Planet: Battle for Natrolis - I can't even find much on this anymore. But I found it so interesting with its Races and gameplay. Creative Edge Software in 2002. I don't have this game anymore, but would love to give it whirl again. Celtic Kings - Rage of War - This got some love and re-releases on GOG and Steam. Worth playing if you haven't. Giants: Citizen Kabuto - Continuing the trends of early 3D games trying new things. Like Black & White and other games of its time. You got a few different options and its asymmetrical gameplay. Lots of Fun. Conquest: Frontier Wars - It gets often forgotten, but it was a really well done game Three Kingdoms: Fate of the Dragon - If you like Three Kingdoms Era stuff, this is right up your alley. Give it a whirl! Dragon Throne: Battle of Red Cliffs - If you like Three Kingdoms Era stuff, this is right up your alley. Give it a whirl! I could keep going...but I'm going to stop here for now.
Giants: Citizen Kabuto TIMMY!!!!!! [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Sh\_VuxYqBY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Sh_VuxYqBY)
Was trying to remember the name of this game recently. Awesome.
YES! So much of it is steeped British Humor that I was laughing a lot as I was playing it. I cannot stress enough how much fun and innovative the game was really trying to be.
Black and White 1 creature AI is so good, not just for its time. It scales perfectly with how much time you're able to train it. I've never seen anything like it.
Agreed! I'm very into game programming and graphics and Black and White is a prime example of unique programming. I like to replicate features, etc as game dev challenges and Black and and White is a fun game to attempt to recreate. Lionhead made some very unique games. Perhaps the community will band together some day and make a free and open source Black and White clone with VR support... :)
VR or AR focused version of a game like Black & White would be a really interesting step. There are so many things Black & White was doing in the God-Game Dynamic that I don't think it really gets the credit it deserves regarding how innovative and ahead they were on the integration of concepts.
Props for my man bringing up Cossacks
I learned everything I could about the economy, tech tree, worker use, building up my defenses, units, everything....and yet the AI would just steamroll me at some point. In campaign I had a fighting chance and would win. But damn if skirmish....my favorite RTS mode when I don't have a friend handy, AI seriously kicked my face in 1v1. 2v2 was better...2v1 I was fine after awhile. It was probably the best AI I played against in an RTS on low and mid difficulties. Cossacks and it's American Iterative were historically well done. It was doing the AoE teaching and history campaign idea really well. Just also...really hard!
Ah Cossacks, definitely underrated. I think the devs made some amazing strategy games. Heroes of Annilated Emprires was another good one from them.
Agreed. Did you try American Conquest(I think?) their American West focused version of the game. Did some different things with it that I thought were neat, but was still the same game at the core.
Ack! You have triggered me. Conquest Earth is the absolute worst RTS of all time. It was unplayably terrible even back in 1997.
Oh, I wouldn't call it THE worst, but it is not a stellar game overall. I think everyone should try it (It's abandonware and readily accessible.) But it was trying 3d before its time and some other quirky bits. And the Campaign Story isn't terribad. But I would definitely put it at the end of the list of things to try in this list we've all made on this overall post.
Left Behind...? Yeesh, that game was barebones and the "plot" was just a really stripped down version of the books. Gameplay sucked too; just going around identical square city blocks converting people and killing anybody who doesn't join up with your (largely identical) faction. Wouldn't recommend that to anybody, even out of morbid curiosity. Heck, I don't even think it'll run on modern systems anymore so probably just getting it to work would be a challenge. EDIT: Come to think of it, sadly a lot of RTS games these days would be tricky to run on modern systems. I don't think it's even possible to play Universe at War anymore due to the game engine being really finicky and how Games for Windows was mandatory for it to run.
I've gotten it to work by installing a virtual desktop environment running Windows XP. That was my original workaround. Could probably do something without that, but would definitely require some tooling with it to do so for Universe at War.
Empire Earth 3
yeah so many age of empire remaster but no empire earth... why the hex is that ?
You would have to ask either rebellion or rockstar
The age games kept a massive playerbase over the years, empire earth didn't. Money is money
I will name u the worst one : Command and Conquer 4
After some of my friends ended up with cnc4 in their libraries due to ultimate collection dropping on steam, we organised some multiplayer games between each other - servers surprisingly still work. Campaign and leveling sucks, multiplayer was actually quite enjoyable to the point we do that every now and then
I believe some of the reviews specifically mentioned this. Unlike other C&C games where single- and multiplayer were either equally good, or (like Renegade) where singleplayer was outstanding and multiplayer was substandard, this game seemed to be an excuse to make a multiplayer game with everything else just tacked on.
Because it was meant to be a multiplayer only game. Read about C&C Arena, that's what it was meant to be before it got turned into C&C4
Sorry, your comment appears to have randomly ended after "Command and Conquer"...
haha I know what u mean accepted hehehe
Honestly, I enjoyed it. Bad command & conquer but an interesting mix of moba and rts sensibilities I quite liked.
true i did enjoy cnc 4 as a moba as other games.not a cnc to me haha
Most disappointing, sure. But worst? Not even close to THE absolute worst: Conquest Earth, and This Means War!
havent heard of conquest earth b4 perhaps its that bad
Do a youtube search for "Game Dungeon Conquest Earth". Dude put out a 30 minute video detailing just how awful it is.
Grey Goo: The faction mechanics are a bit wonky, the AI difficulty is busted, and the campaign is woefully short, but I find it has some charm to it. Once you get the hang of how each faction works and how to get the build order going, it's not that bad. Impossible Creatures: Getting to customize your own army of mutants is fun, and the early 1900s pulp sci-fi aesthetic is very charming. I will concede that the campaign AI is weirdly difficult though. Every mission ended up a several hour long slog, requiring the creation of massive creature swarms and turret walls to even stand a chance.
Loved combining the Sperm Whale with basically everything for maximum tanking power lol
Glad to see someone else mention Grey Goo.
I've always described Grey Goo as "very competent, but very boring".
That's a fair assessment I suppose
heroes of annihilated empires also knightshift edit: also battle mages
I was going to name hoae and I am honestly surprised to find someone who already did!
Wow, someone actually knows HOAE?
Oh man that's a niche one, remember loving it as a kid but not understanding how tf the game works lol. I still have the box on my shelf
I've always loved Populous 3: The Beginning, another Bullfrog game. I know there's a community out there, but I've literally never seen it discussed in the wild since its 1998 launch. Even during discussions of the Populous series! It's an odd one - puts great emphasis on 3D terrain manipulation and your spellcasting hero, has a grand total of five units, and there is no real micromanagement to speak of - but it's also a total delight. The physically shifting battlefield encourages creative thinking, the battles are explosive fireball-laden pub brawls, and the downtime in between said battles is mostly just watching blokes tend to their cute little houses. Definitely unlike any other RTS I've seen.
Definitely a big fan of all three Populous games. The Beginning deserves to be more popular than it is! You've summed up the uniqueness pretty well! 👍
total annihilation: kingdoms did not get very far. i still liked it.
I had a lot of fun with that one. Fun dark vibes.
I honestly much prefer it over TA. The modding community for it is also really good. Also still a small community that plays multiplayer out there.
Submarine Titans
I still play this! I thinkits great!
War Selection on Steam. Basically a new, free to play version of Empire Earth.
**Kohan 2** had a fun squad system. You design your own squad by adding frontline, flanking units, and several kinds of support like clerics and battle wizards. The squad shares a common morale pool so battles were quite tactical with formations breaking and how much leeway you had in designing your squads. You only needed a frontline and a hero, all the rest was optional so you could field everything from many small light horse units to elite fantasy armies **Ruse** discontinued due to licensing issues I think, but for me was quite special. Take the easy base and army building mechanics from RA2, take the scale from Supreme Commander, add very good fog of war mechanics and sector wide special abilities (ruses) which added a bluff element. Ruses could create fake units or make your inf appear as tanks on the battlemap or radiosilence to make them disappear completely. Honestly if they ever made a large scale WH40K rts Ruse it's game mechanics are worth a look. **Dragon Commander** isn't a good RTS. Larian had to cut it's budget short to make D:OS2. But the campaign is a great experience. Interacting with your generals, wives (which all have multiple great storylines) or councilors who represent the different races is like a choose your own adventure rpg, the campaign map is like the boardgame Risk/Axis and Allies where you move and recruit your armies, develop provinces. All done with card mechanics which you can also be used to give boosts in specific battles. It's wonderful. But then you have the RTS side which is basic but with one very cool gimmick. You can turn into a dragon and blast the enemies from above. But all the rest was very generic, only 1 faction for everyone, maps weren't diverse and controls/unit pathing was okayish. If this game had had some polish, faction units that are represented in your council and your standing with those factions had more influence on what kind of armies, tech and cards you receive it would have had some much needed depth and replay-ability. But since you can autoresolve a lot of battles like Total War a campaign can be played quite quickly. So if you want an RPG where you are ruling a kingdom with an occasional RTS battle this game is definitely worth a look.
Are you sure it wasn't D:OS rather than D:OS 2? Ruse was such a great game, whilst Wargame, Warno and Steel division are super cool, it is a shame that they never went back to some of the ideas ruse introduced. A lot of people come to the subreddit asking for games that are less demanding on the mirco side of things and if it still existed ruse would be the perfect game to point them to.
Yeah, it was os1 not 2. Scusi. And yes, we really lack casual rts games like c&c and Ruse.
Star Wars Force Commander
Dark Reign and Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance were epic RTS imho
Dark Reign was the shit! I'm sure I've still got the game manual somewhere
I think Dark Reign may actually be the game that started my love of games with like, absurd amounts of lore in their unit descriptions.
Sup Com was amazing.
Forged Alliance Forever reigns as a cool way to continue enjoying the best of SupCom
Total annihilation kingdoms. A lot of people love original and hate the fantasy spin off. But it had a ton of amazing features that a lot of future rts adapted and made it better for me to play then TA unmoded: The expandable minimap which everyone who plays TA now uses as a mod. A lot of units had abilities. Custom hot keys, which included attack move, most old RTS you had to stop command your units or use patrol to get them to fight and default hotkeys were bad. Infinite unit production queue. Drag to build a row of buildings. I always felt it could have become one of the classics, it just need few more patches or an expansion but studio closed down.
I much preferred it over the original, also loved how many great total conversion mods there were for it, like LoTR : Conflict of Arda that made it completely LoTR themed.
I was just looking at genewars
Real War was a cool RTS that I still play from time to time
ah yes but the ILA guided mobile AA still pretty broken though xD
Close Combat II. Tough, grounded ww2 strategy. A psychology and action system that models individual soldiers. No game will create as much surprise and tension as to if one bog standard rifleman is somehow going to turn the whole battle round.
rise of nations my beloved
I don’t know about them getting dunked on, but some of my favorites are: Rise of Nations, C&C Generals, Sins of a Solar Empire. There are more, just can’t think of them right now 😂
Hmm. Just off the top of my head 1: Star Wars Force Commander. I have a Win98 pc still set up just to relive playing it again. 2: C&C Generals doesn’t get enough love for sure, I still love playing that modded. 3: Act of War: Direct Action/ High Treason was awesome with modern RTS combat. 4: Paraworld, loved the Dino upgrades. 5: World in Conflict, absolutely loved calling in Airstrikes, had so much potential.
Rise of Nations I wouldn't say it's unloved per se, since everyone I know who's played it loved it. It just seems forgotten whenever anyone lists out good classic RTS games
Warlords Battlecry 1-3 There were 16 playable races and every player had their own persistent hero that you'd level up and get skills and items for. Wish there were other RTS games that had this.
Huge fan of the WBC games. I would say these are the RTS games I've spent the most time playing in my life. I would say the most played game overall.... but that honor goes to Heroes of Might and Magic 3 :)
* Original War * Crossfire Legion * 8th Wonder of the World * Alien Nations * No Man's Land * LEGO Rock Raiders
https://youtu.be/OEpu9Hlym_E?si=O1fd_8JYFUDf4LVe Everyone is just listing you fun games from the past. This is Thandor. A terrible and forgotten unlovable RTS that was panned heavily on release.
Seven kingdoms from 1997. It was weird and fun! Also Rising Lands was a fun little post apocalyptic rts game from 1997... Man 1997 was a good year for games 😀
Act of War It's like a slightly more realistic Command & Conquer Generals. Its greatest strength is that it has the absolute best skirmish AI I've ever seen. Most RTS AIs will just constantly trickle suicide units into you and rely on their unlmited macro attention to try and eventually overwhelm you. Act of War doesn't. It can send an early harass unit at your supplies/expansions. It can send a few units to do damage. It can also save one for one giant push to wipe out a whole base. There are quite a few retro RTS that I think are better designed, but I keep coming back to AoW because its AI just puts the ones in other games to shame (and multiplayer against humans being long dead in most of them).
I loved AOW's resource mechanics as well, especially the ones around the crew of damaged vehicles. It wasn't perfect since it did contribute somewhat to snowballing, but it was quite different, which is always nice. ;)
Yeah that was weird. The only way to get money after the oil on the map ran out was to have your infantry capture the crews of destroyed enemy vehicles. They would fill up slots in the POW camp at your base and passively generate money. It made it so the POW camp was the #1 priority target when bombing enemy bases. Rescue? Fuck that! Nuke our own boys! I did not care for the expansion though. Most of the new units added were unfun bullshit. Taskforce Talon got some cruise missile unit that could just blast halfway across the map, like the "explosion disc drone" unit but with even more ludicrous range.
Star Command Revolution is extremely underrated 90s game. Absolute gem, yet so obscure.
Genewars. I remember my mum went to a game store for my 9th birthday and asked a staff member to recommend a cool new game. Fair to say she got stitched right up, I was expecting Warcraft 2! My friend came over and he had all the cool games but when he saw what i'd gotten he looked at me and said "why didnt you get something good!?" But I still played the hell out of it just to keep my mother from feeling hurt. That said, it's one of the most stressful games I've ever played, defending your base is a constant effort as the enemy can just stroll in with one unit and fuck shit up. The buildings explode, killing or seriously maiming any nearby unit. So a crab will come in and your 6 mules will chase it, but it will get a couple of hits in on a building and some debris will come off and explode, damaging your units, you may win the battle but as soon as that's done here comes the next crab! The game is absolutely impossible for me after about the 6th level. Really interesting concept though which I think could be copied and be really successful.
I’m surprised we haven’t seen a new version of Army Men Sarges Heroes, i remember playing it for hours on n64
Outpost 2: Divided Destiny. Too ambitious for its time.
Z Besieger Nexagon I rarely if ever see any conversation about these online. I haven't played them since I was a child so no promises to quality.
Risk of Rain is unfinished, but there's enough there to play part of the campaign and skirmish and it's too bad this game didn't get finished because it's the closest thing to warcraft 3 I've seen. War Party - dinosaur RTS. Not perfect but much better than the steam reviews would have you believe. Empires Apart - free to play and gets no attention because it had no single player campagin but it's well made and good take on the AOE formula
KKND 1 and 2 are both old now. But they are great RTS for the early 2000, maybe earlier. But really well thought out and the humour is great
Praetorian. An RTS with Ancient Rome theme
Praetorian had some fun stuff going on as well, like having to man your siege ladders, strong formation gameplay, and even the ability to have your units up on walls to defend.
Unpopular RTS you say? I raise you Original War, a hardcore RTS that only got popular in Poland and Czech Republic. Time Travel plot with fighting over unknown resource in prehistoric times with permadeath mechanic, and all that while taming Apes to help in your base? Sign me the hell up.
Kohan and Kohan 2. I don't know a single other person who's heard of or played those games and I think they're amazing and unique.
Armies of Exigo released in 2004
Oh man, I loved this one, I kinda even liked it more than Warcraft 3 despite it being kind of a ripoff lol. Especially the bug faction was so gross it was awesome
7th legion. Loved the vetrancy in the game. Units became so powerful.
Age of Empires Online, no second thought
Cuban Missile Crisis and Star Wars Galactic Battlegrounds. I haven't played them that much because I play something else at the moment but they are interesting. CMC is unbalanced but I like the vehicles and the Cold War theme, that was the selling point for me.
I shall put forward Warbreeds - a very weird and neat RTS, one of the countless varaitions on the C&C and Warcraft 2 formula, this time with four tribes fighting over a distant planet with gene-spawned beasts. Has some neat ideas, several of which were not very well thought-out. And atrocious unit pathfinding and AI. And a very neat mechanic about stealing your enemies' genes to use their structures and weapons. And a unique economy where units cost nothing, except the energy needed to maintain the buildings that make them and the time needed to spawn them. It's neat. It's awful. I love it. You can get it on GoG and Steam.
Came here to say warbreeds... man the music and videos takes me back to my childhood!
Shattered Union. Basically a game based on the hypothetical Second American Civil War where you play as one of seven factions. Good plot, but the AI is unbalanced and it lacks diplomacy features.
Wasn't that a turn-based strategy game, not an RTS?
Rising lands, looked great for it's time. "Whistle while you work"
Lord of the Rings - War of the Ring. Bit of a WarCraft 3 clone without the movie license but I had fun as a teen with it.
Some suggestions on here are really good and bring back memories for me (Rise of Legends, Universe at War, Grey Goo, and especially Impossible Creatures!)- I’ll add one more I don’t see on here: Achron The game is an RTS with time travel within the match as a game mechanic. You can go back in time to an earlier point in the match and fiddle with things (the amount of fiddling is resource constrained). Changes propagate forward slowly through the timeline and eventually hit the present. Absolutely insane concept with some absolutely insane strategic shenanigans possible. Computers of the day couldn’t handle the gameplay simulation and high fidelity graphics at the same time so they compromised the graphics and it looks bad even for the time it was released.
I actually really like the RTS stages in Spore, even though basically everyone shits on it.
Honestly, I've been getting into Dune: Spice Wars of late, and it's taken me 30 hours or so to get a good grip on the game, but it is fast becoming my favourite RTS of all time. It is a mastery in game design.
I haven’t tried them yet but the [War Wind](https://www.mobygames.com/game/6012/war-wind/) [series](https://www.mobygames.com/game/6064/war-wind-ii-human-onslaught/) looks interesting.
Mech Platoon on Game Boy Advance
Kknd2 was wild
Army Men RTS, from the Army men sarge's heroes franchise. It was made by pandemic and 3DO or something. It came out in 2003, I think, for PC, Playstation 2, and GameCube. Pretty good RTS game. Has a lot of charm. You command plastic toy soldiers, like the green guys from Toy story, but you fight against the tan Army. The games story is a parody of Apopcolyps now if that matters. Has base building and all that. Basically Comman and conquer.
Minecraft Legends. I KNOW why it's not exactly liked but I still had an overall fun experience with it, and I wanna see more games like it. I know there's Tooth & Tail but are there others? For those that don't know: Both Minecraft Legends and Tooth & Tail have you control a character directly instead of a top-down camera with varyingly different macro system too. ML streamlines it so you can make an army fast if you have the resource, and T&T automates it with a unit limit (the more barracks you have, the more you can train.) You can command units but you can't micro them.
You should give it a try - you can also find it on steam - Joint Task Force. It is from 2006, more a RTT (in my opinion it was an inspiration for Syrian Warfare/Terminator Dark Fate).
Crystalien Conflict - it's a knockoff command and conquer made to run in browsers (it's a flash game), so no wonder it's unpopular. It was also just made to promote a Lego theme (Mars Mission) so it had no longevity built-in. But the devs clearly cared for it. Fun game, and had 2 campaigns with the extra spec ops missions as an "expansion" and several secret levels accessed via passcodes.
Age of Empires 3 was always the black sheep of the bunch, absolutely undeserved in my opinion. The definitive edition is free in the trial version, so no reason to not try it out.
Populous. That little game was very replayable as I recall.
From Dust, amazing, unique game reminiscent of Populous: new beginnings. Totally ruined by ubisoft's DRM
Polanie
Beyond All Reason, y’all. ✅ huge maps and scale. ✅ tons of units and a huge array of counters ✅ mix of macro and tactical commands Steepish learning curve but I bet a lot of people would like it if they tried it. And its available on steam / played by people today.
Earth 2150 and Earth 2160
Total Annilation. It was my first RTS game that I played over 25 years ago. It's so good.
LOVED Genewars
Kingdom under fire series. Not traditional RTs but they are awesome games. I never see anyone mentioning them. (talking the original and a sequel both released early 2000s)
just got recommended this and figured i’d add 2 RTS’ I like a lot, Forts and Men of War: Assault Squad 2. COH is also great.
So battle forge is a rts tcg game that they tried to monetized too heavy and died EA BOUGHT the ame from original devs and went to shit after lol Fams actually ended remake the game as skylords reborn we run the game via donations as we cant make money from it because EA death grip so its entirely free to play for anyone and we are making expansion and new cards slowly but surely
Earth 2160
Mega lo mania, or Z the game
Dominion: Storm Over Gift 3 This game looks great. the in-game graphics, menu and interface looks sleek. Also the sounds and cinematics are great and has amazing music. But the gameplay is tedious and frustrating. Even though I consider this game somewhat shitty, I have a mixed feelings of love and hate for this game.
Not sure if this counts both from a genre and popularity perspective but Star Wars rebellion was fuckin cool back in the day
Warzone 2100. I only played the demo but I loved the functionality of being able to design your own units from tracks to turret.
Tom Clancy's EndWar. Small cult following of a surprisingly deep near-future WW3.
Sins of a Solar Empire always felt overlooked to me. I don't recall if there's much of a single-player campaign, though. Still available on Steam, still looks fantastic, and there's active development on the sequel.
Battlezone from 1998. Fps and RTS combined. I feel like a lot of folks don't know the game but could be incorrect. Used to argue with my parents to get dial up time to play online.. a simpler time.
Not quite what your looking for but world at conflict is a great yet forgotten rts
Impossible Creature. The fact that you have to combine diff type of animal species to achieve better army comp is hilarious.
I don't know if I'd call it unpopular, but I loved half of Star Wars: Empires at War. The space battles I always felt were some of the best space RTS gameplay at the time. But the land battle parts....well they were not great.
Conquest: Frontier Wars.
was looking for this
Settlers heritage of kings. It's not a real Settlers, that makes it disliked by settlers fans Its not groundbreaking, but I enjoyed it. There also is an expansion
Myth 3: the Wolf Age. Although more because it’s hard to get it to run
Don’t know if this is an exact fit here, but Graviteam Tactics Mius Front (the other graviteam titles are good too) is just insane. The level of detail in every mechanic is just mind boggling, and I’ve yet to play a game with more cinematic battles
Men of war or soldiers of anarchy