Real Time Strategy, The RTS HQ

Woah, most are unknown to me. A lot of which I haven’t even played. The only one I did was probably the Warlords Battlecry 3 and Battle Realms.

Praetorians Cossacks: Back to War Rise of Nations The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-Earth The Settlers: Heritage of Kings Warrior Kings: Battles Submarine Titans ParaWorld Battle Realms Grey Goo Warlords Battlecry 3 Heroes of Annihilated Empires Age of Mythology: Extended Edition Armies of Exigo American Conquest Dragonshard Star Wars: Empire at War Kohan 2: Kings of War Aarklash Legacy Empire Earth Ancient Wars: Sparta Tzar: Burden of the Crown

So I played Hearts of Iron 3 and Factorio, both games having "supply routes" of some kind.

In HoI3, soldiers only fight with full efficacy if they're regularly given 'Supplies', a resource. There's also "Fuel" which is needed for tanks and airplanes to function.

This means that in HoI3, you can effectively surround, and siege, units of soldiers. By surrounding a unit, they lose supplies and then fight at half (or worse) efficacy. It also does morale damage and other stacking penalties.

Factorio isn't a real RTS, but it is much more granular on the supply route. It has a tower-defense like game vs the Biters. Every gun that fires in Factorio requires resources for that gun to fire.

As such: you think about where to place supplies. Or in Factorio terms: bullet magazines, rockets, electricity (if using lasers), Grenades, solid fuel or coal (depending on how you run your vehicles), etc. etc.

I guess I'm looking at an RTS game that has these elements. I feel like "supplies" is one of the most fundamental strategies in the real world, but only is covered by a minority of games. Units in Starcraft or AoE2 just perform at full strength no matter what. No consideration of food or arrows (IIRC: Medieval Archers only entered battle with ~6 arrows IIRC. If they needed more, you needed a cart somewhere with additional arrows).

And slingers of history were well known to be able to march in the day, while crafting sling bullets at night (local rocks and clay could be used to create sling bullets, allowing slingers to self-sufficiently create their supplies). Its one of the reasons why slingers were used for so long in practice, because Arrows take far more skill to craft than sling-bullets. Even though the Bow-and-Arrow was a superior weapon, the sling continued to be used for centuries for its ease-of-supplying.

A game that handles these kind of supply issues or supply considerations would be great. Too many supplies just "teleport" to units where and whenever needed.

Bonus points to Armored Brigade. While there's no "resupply" mechanic, there's very careful consideration on the amount of bullets a typical unit carries, and every bullet is tracked by the game. When you run out of shots, the unit basically is useless.

A worthwhile watch. An interesting perspective where RTS still exist, thriving; just not in the form we used to play.