The History of Real Time Strategy
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The History of Real Time Strategy A GameReplays.org Special Feature August 7, 2008 Web Page Version This work is © 2007 and 2008 GameReplays.org. All Rights Reserved. All images either display the owner's watermark or are in the public domain. Table of Contents Forward to the Revised Edition.................................................................................................................3 Introduction................................................................................................................................................7 Chapter 1: The Past is Prologue.................................................................................................................8 The Beginnings of Real Time Strategy.................................................................................................8 Stonkers...............................................................................................................................................10 Mega-Lo-Mania...................................................................................................................................12 Herzog Zwei........................................................................................................................................14 Chapter 2: The Glory Years.....................................................................................................................16 Defining a Genre.................................................................................................................................16 Dune 2.................................................................................................................................................17 Command and Conquer.......................................................................................................................20 WarCraft II: Tides of Darkness...........................................................................................................23 Command and Conquer: Red Alert.....................................................................................................27 Age of Empires....................................................................................................................................30 Starcraft...............................................................................................................................................33 Command and Conquer: Tiberian Sun................................................................................................36 Stronghold...........................................................................................................................................40 Command and Conquer: Red Alert 2..................................................................................................42 Chapter 3: Polygons and Pixels...............................................................................................................45 The 3D Revolution..............................................................................................................................45 Total Annihilation...............................................................................................................................46 Shogun: Total War..............................................................................................................................49 Emperor: Battle for Dune....................................................................................................................51 Medieval: Total War...........................................................................................................................53 Homeworld..........................................................................................................................................56 Conquest: Frontier Wars.....................................................................................................................59 Empire Earth........................................................................................................................................63 WarCraft III: Reign of Chaos..............................................................................................................66 Homeworld 2.......................................................................................................................................69 Chapter 4: The New Wave.......................................................................................................................72 A Genre Comes of Age.......................................................................................................................72 Rise of Nations....................................................................................................................................73 Rome: Total War.................................................................................................................................77 Act of War...........................................................................................................................................80 Age of Empires III...............................................................................................................................83 Command and Conquer: Generals......................................................................................................87 The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle Earth...........................................................................91 Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War.....................................................................................................95 The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle Earth 2......................................................................101 Company of Heroes ..........................................................................................................................106 Supreme Commander........................................................................................................................113 Command and Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars.......................................................................................116 Chapter 5: The Stuff of Dreams.............................................................................................................122 Epilogue: The Future of Real Time Strategy....................................................................................122 Appendix................................................................................................................................................126 World in Conflict...............................................................................................................................126 Lord of the Rings Games: A Franchise Perspective..........................................................................129 Timeline of the RTS Genre...............................................................................................................133 Credits....................................................................................................................................................138 Forward to the Revised Edition In a feature as extensive as this one it only seems appropriate to say a few words about how it came to be in the form it is today. If I had known what I was getting myself into when I first started looking for writers interested in creating a history of the real time strategy genre, I probably would have been intimidated and given up right then and there. Great ambitions have a way of disguising the many trials that are inevitably and intimately woven into their nature. The only redeeming value of these ambitions is that they supply the energy to overcome these trials when they finally surface. And so, in retrospect, I am glad that the project began with such a great and unrealistically ambitious vision—because if it had not been initially imagined as such it never would have been realized at all. In the months before I proposed the idea I had begun to notice that an increasing number of people at GameReplays.org were unfamiliar with the older RTS games. I had grown up playing these games and had simply taken for granted that others knew something about them as well. I looked on other RTS websites and discovered the same trend. I'm not sure when it happened—in all probability it simply happened so slowly that nobody noticed—but somewhere along the way a new generation of RTS fans had quietly slipped in amongst us “old school” players. So, like any old schooler facing a new generation of young punks, I decided that these youngsters had better learn their history. But I didn't want to write the history myself; that was a Herculean task no sane person would ever attempt. Instead, I took the easy route and searched the Internet for that history. I was not surprised at the quantity of information out there—it was quite adequate—but what did surprise me was the its quality, which was very inadequate. It seemed impossible to find any source that explained what any given RTS game was “really about.” Information of every type—reviews, screenshots, unit statistics, and even some videos—was everywhere, but nowhere was it all compiled into a single piece of writing that explained what the game was “really about” and what made it similar to and different from all the other RTS games out there. The one work that actually had attempted to