Well, other people have already mentioned everything I was going to bring up. Good selections, all of them. I guess I might just give some unsolicited advice to a prospective RTS player:


Think One (or more) Steps Ahead
It's very easy to get trapped in a situation where you're only thinking about your short-term needs, and getting blind-sided when a long-term problem rears its head or getting overwhelmed if lots of things happen at once. It comes with the territory of the fast-paced nature of this genre. This is also why veteran RTS players appear so fast; they don't have supernatural reflexes or computer-like processing abilities. They've just thought things through and already know how they're going to respond to different situations.

Force yourself to Multi-Task
Every so often, force yourself to stop what you're doing and ask "am I forgetting anything?" Use this as an opportunity to attend to needs you may be putting off, and maybe identify problems you might have overlooked. Nothing loses RTS games quicker than someone who simply forgets to keep building new units to replace his casualties. This is a hard habit to get into, but it's an import one.

The Simplest Solution is often the Best Solution
A plan with too many steps or points or failure can be unraveled very easily. Try to use plans that are relatively straightforward and make few presumptions. A great plan is one that lets you adapt on the fly and doesn't take a whole lot of work to set up in the first place. AI's can be a little bit predictable, which gives you more leeway here, but you'll still have an easier time if you keep your plans simple.

It's the Economy!
Most RTS games have some sort of resource-gathering mechanic, and force you to balance your resources between different priorities. This can be particularly daunting for beginners, and there's no hard and fast rule that works for every game. If you're getting overwhelmed by an opponent with vastly more units than you, this is by far the most likely culprit. You're either spending too little on military (and just getting steamrolled at the first real fight) or you're spending too much on military (and getting steamrolled by an enemy who has way more spending power than you). Every game is going to have a different "sweet spot" that gives you the right balance of military and economy, and it'll take a little trial and error to find it. If you're having trouble, try going online and looking for a "build order" to get you started.

There is only one golden rule here: spend your resources as quickly as possible. Money spent on additional resource gatherers can make you more money. Money spent on military units and upgrades to military units will help you win the game. Money sitting in your bank account does nothing for you. Don't pile up up large quantities unless you're saving for something special. See my second point (force yourself to multi-task) and avoid letting unspent resources pile up.

(Multiplayer Only) - Ignore the Trash Talk, and Don't be that Guy
Seriously, there's a lot of vicious and juvenile trash talk out there. My advice is to ignore it. People who act like this are jerks who don't deserve your anger or indignation. I know first-hand that these can sometimes sting, and that developing the hard skin necessary to ignore it outright is difficult, but above all else don't let some asshole deprive you of the enjoyment of your game.

Flipping this around, don't be that guy! Treat the other players with respect and courtesy.

Prepare to get your ass kicked. Seriously.

Then I can forget it. Lol. Any cheats available? :P

Apparently not, unless you're willing to edit your saves with a hex editor. But well, you should easily get a few missions in with every house so you may still get some fun out of it. ^^

I strongly suggest Starcraft 2 for a RTS begginer. Just stay away from multiplayer until you get a hang of the game.

Well, I'll keep it short (kinda): I don't acknowledge the separation of wargames and strategy or tactical games, wargames are either tactical or strategy games in my book, if someone has played strategy games there's in my experience a good chance that he has played what you refer to as "wargames" and also other TB genres are largely inspired by "wargames" or even hybrids of wargames and something else. Also I think that you focus too much on 4X games when thinking "strategy". There's *many* different kinds of turn based / strategy games, many of which feature a basic gameplay which keeps you on your toes (whether it's Panzer General, Heroes of Might & Magic or... well, one of the many other kinds of strategy games :P) and well, even the "expand - build - expand - build" routine from 4X games is closer to Dawn of War's expansion based gameplay than the classic RTS gameplay revolving around two big bases shooting sperm at each other... dang, I meant units. Units!

And as for the suppression thing: as I said it's a concept that someone who hasn't ever even heard of it should be able to grasp it in a minute since it's just a change of state in a unit caused by perfectly reasonable influences. And honestly, there's generally more of those in TBS games than RTS. It's rather people used to classic RTS games who may get overwhelmed by factors like this, who may have a "what is this shit?" moment when they see that their troops are unable to fight despite having almost full HP. And I assure you that turn based games knew demoralized and suppressed troops as well as other states long before they found their way into the RTS genre (heck, even 4X games often employ different states for units in combat).

Well, yeah, whatever, I'm tired. Time to get some shleeeep. <.<

Yeah and I'm working on getting drunk so my focus haven't been that clear for a post or two so a break fits me well too.

OK. Will still be a long time till I get around to playing it, though :)

Well, in all honesty, I don't know exactly. The best I could find was a thread (now two years old, so things may have changed) where the creator (Gruntlord) makes comments stating that Dune 2000 is abandonware, it is still under copyright and was never released as freeware because EA don't own the Dune IP, but that EA are not enforcing any copyright. His site is still up and running, and he still updates the Gruntmods edition. The thread I found is here: http://forum.dune2k.com/topic/21713-dune-2000-freeware/

That said, the Gruntmods edition is fully patched and fixed for Win Vista and 7, 64-bit support, and works with the high resolution mod (which he plans to incorporate into future versions). It is also comes with the D2K+ modding tools.

Funny, I would consider it a very good starting point for a beginning RTS player, very good tutorial that teaches you how to play, the game mechanism and rules are quite easy to comprehend, and it is not that hard.

I consider e.g. the KKND games or Age of Empires 1 much harder games than Starcraft. For instance, in AOE there were

- timed missions where you didn't necessarily even have any villagers to create more buildings and gather resources, and you had to rush to destroy one or several enemy bases before a timer went out

- missions where trying to cling to your starting village/base was pretty much a suicide, and you had to have courage to leave it behind with everything you got, and try to find a more peaceful place for a new village

I think pretty much all resource-gathering Starcraft missions had always the same basic scheme: get resources => make your starting base strong => create a powerful army => go destroy the enemy base. Then of course there were those special missions where you didn't even have a base...

Don't know if it's been said already, but Homeworld.

Best. RTS. Ever.

Ten years ago I bought a game collection including Dune 2000. It never really worked on my computer at that time (graphical glitches), nowadays it won’t even run properly on Win7/64. So I think I am at least morally allowed to download this new version.

Wow, that would be cool. I need to try it now. Would be great to finally play Dune 2000 in HD and everything. Thanks for the link.

By the way, I noticed that no one mentioned Z from Bitmap Brothers. Because this is really no game for beginners and especially not for those running short before a heart attack. The first 2 or 3 levels are nice, fun and easy, but the speed goes up from there. It was the most hectic RTS I every played (and boy, I only mastered level 8 out of 20 or 30). I could have gone further but it requires real training and getting knowledge of the unit features. And it is fast! (And the computer cheats, I’m sure.)

Play the Games, Volume 2. :D

Speaking of compilations, got that that one from Gold Games 2 (and I've gotta say that the German version is pretty darn good). Anyway, while undoubtedly Z is one very hard game, I think people are overestimating its difficulty. The first two missions are indeed easy compared to the later ones but to be honest the game doesn't really get much harder after the third mission. It also largely comes down to luck, I've had less trouble with some of the later missions than with the second one just because of a few random events. What makes the game appear so incredibly hard, IMO, is that sometimes one unlikely outcome in a single encounter will ruin your plan and stuff will keep snowballing at you from there - but if you don't instantly give up because of the frustration you will notice that the same thing happens the other way around just as often and you may get through some of the later and supposedly harder missions with ease.

As for a cheating AI - I actually think that Z may be one of the few games where the AI does not cheat at all. There's comparably few things where it could do so (there's no resources and you do see the production times of the enemy factories and barracks and IIRC they are the same as for the player) and having a lot of experience with the game I can tell (as said above) that the chances for the different outcomes during the encounters seem to be the same for both sides. It's like with gambling, kinda, you're lucky a few times and you have the impression that the system favors you, you have bad luck a few times and you feel like the opponent cheats - plus some players are unaware of a few factors (like that infantry units have different levels of intelligence and tanks will behave differently based on the driver). But all in all I think that Z may be one of the very few RTS games where the AI does not receive any bonuses which is perfectly plausible since the basic gameplay is much simpler than in most other RTS games and the AI only has to deal with comparably easy tasks.

Anyway, great game. Still waiting for a digital release of the PC version (a mobile version was released a year or two ago so it seems that there shouldn't be any legal reason why the game couldn't be released for PC).

Almost. It was volume 3. I still have the original box and most of the CDs. They are still running and some are even unopened (“Silver”).

Darn, I knew I had forgotten something yesterday: playing the new Dune 2000 version. But the Be Mine9 bundle got my attention and I played Ittle Dew for a long time.^^

You are right in that later missions are not more difficult than earlier ones because the luck factor is the most important one. But you do not only need luck: the right selection of units to produce and where to send them is crucial, especially at the beginning where everyone possesses half of the map or there are even free flags. Then there are luck events (can I catch the flag or not?), and you have to be very quick in your decisions. That’s the point where it gets really hard. In contrast to other RTS you can get behind very quickly and then it’s over. I never played more than level 8 or 9, but I think there are still unit types I have not seen, so the game gets still more complex (and difficult).

Cheating Ai, no it’s not real cheating during the game, but some maps are unbalanced. You are in disadvantage at the beginning (or it seems so because they are not symmetric).

I would really like a new PC version, maybe more balanced and with a “less stress mode” for beginners. Since the iOS version was planned I hoped for a PC release (it was promised!), but they never did. :(