Screw that, everyone is afraid of 1000 vs 1000 unit battles. This is what I want!
Total Annihilation and its ilk balance that by having the commander unit, which is game-over if lost. There are a lot of really underhanded tactics one can employ to sneak a win here. (My favorite is picking up the enemy commander with a transport and then scuttling the transport...) Plus the large army size means the player likely has exploitable gaps in their defenses as their attention is split so many more ways.
Oh well I guess that depends on the win condition, and yes I can imagine 1000v1000 units can be fun (myself am an avid enjoyer of 4v4 in SC2). But especially as the number of players go up, I think the popcap should be going down. I've played a couple custom 2v2 games in SC2 with a reduced popcap (100 instead of 200) and the games were wiiiiiiiild: you have very little economy and turtling is just impossible, so the games end up being constant and insane back&forth to claw an advantage.
I guess what I really don't like in RTSs is turtling. If I wanted to play SimCity, I'd be playing SimCity.
Not sure why you would expect that turtling (porc(upine)ing) would work in a competitive game with 2 teams, the opponnents will just take the rest of the map and then crush you using these extra resources. And a lower population cap would make it easier to turtle, not harder, so I'm kind of confused as to how it worked in your example ?
"Playing Sim City" is a common insult thrown at team mates BTW in TA-derived games (too).
> Not sure why you would expect that turtling (porc(upine)ing) would work in a competitive game with 2 teams, the opponnents will just take the rest of the map and then crush you using these extra resources.
That's exactly the issue, when playing in a random team. Matchmaking can be a real dice roll in a small playerbase (which SC2 4v4 is). Sometimes I get teammates 500MMR below me, where the metagame is almost always turtling to T3 behind infinite static defense.
Being the only aggressive player in a game with 7 turtles feels extremely unrewarding. Sure I can go expand first into 80+ workers before making a single army unit. I just think games like this suck.
Even if you execute your initial greed correctly, you're still vulnerable because they've been building T3 units, you have more places to defend, and a bigger part of your popcap is taken by the workers. Maybe it would actually be good here if SC2 didn't have a popcap (so that you continue to capitalize on your initial greed for the rest of the game), but that would make Zerg incredibly broken - they make more stuff (including workers) faster than any other faction.
> And a lower population cap would make it easier to turtle, not harder, so I'm kind of confused as to how it worked in your example ?
Lower popcap means you don't get to continue building an even bigger, more unbeatable army behind a wall of turrets or cannons. Static defense doesn't really help against armies (only deters harassment), because siege weapons. Sitting on a maxed army is throwing away a temporary advantage. It incentivizes to attack first, because even if the opponent is maxed too, any time you take an even fight near an enemy base, you get to deal a little bit of damage to their eco or production (the win condition is to destroy all enemy structures).
SC2 recently rotated the entire team map pool; many maps now have very few bases and a very short rush distance. Some people still try to turtle, but it's difficult as attacking early is so much stronger. The average quality of the games has IMHO gone way up.
I love turtling. I hate that the prevailing strategy seems to be always be on the offense and micro eighty million stupid little things. esports and APS have ruined competitive RTS play.
Turtling lets me build up my base and economy and nurture a curbstomping offense after which I can overwhelm my opponents. If I wanted to play a tactical RTS there are a million options out there that limit you with horse-blinders
So your preferred balance is that both players build and nurture a base until one goes an overwhelms and "curbstomps" the other? That doesn't sound satisfying. Remember, 50% of the time you need to be the one getting curbstomped. Just imagine that base you nurtured getting rolled over and there's not much you can do; is that fun?
It's easy to be too optimistic when balancing a game. It's easy to imagine "oh, this unit will be nearly indestructible, and I can watch it destroy my opponents and their bases". But what really happens is "my opponent destroyed me, I tried everything I could but his unit was nearly indestructible".
(This is why we need strong AI for RTS games. First, we get strong AI, then we find ways of dumbing it down in fun ways. In the end we have a creative AI that offers a few surprises, but is content to let the human player win 95% of the time.)
Again, that's why you need the one-unit-that-loses-you-the-game-if-it-dies.
> there's not much you can do; is that fun?
since when is losing supposed to be fun? I don't want to give my opponent chances at a reversal. I want to win, reliably and assuredly.
I don't know what the 'indestructible' unit has to do with any of this, even the most impenetrable fortress has weaknesses. You have to declaw a turtle slowly and methodically, or just straight up overwhelm their defensive lines. A turtling player cannot be everywhere at once, they have weaknesses.
I assume you're talking about competitive play, since you mentioned it, and lamented that competitive RTS play is ruined.
> since when is losing supposed to be fun? I don't want to give my opponent chances at a reversal. I want to win, reliably and assuredly.
This comment explains why this theoretical opponent of yours doesn't exist. You want to play against another human who you can defeat reliably, and who has no fun being defeated. Why would anyone ever want to be your opponent? It's not fun for them, and they have little chance of winning. This is why, as you observed, there's many tactical RTS games that people are playing, but nobody plays games like you imagine.
there are a lot of games where turtling is a viable strat, just not for the entire game. a game without a counter to turtling only ends when one side gets bored.
the fact that any popular game attracts a bunch of sweaty gamers that want to optimize every little thing is not related to the viability of turtling.
Total Annihilation and its ilk balance that by having the commander unit, which is game-over if lost. There are a lot of really underhanded tactics one can employ to sneak a win here. (My favorite is picking up the enemy commander with a transport and then scuttling the transport...) Plus the large army size means the player likely has exploitable gaps in their defenses as their attention is split so many more ways.