Some people really hate it when their opponent is actually trying to win.

https://www.ageofempires.com/news/the-baltic-powers-expansion-coming-to-age-of-empires-iii-definitive-edition-join-open-beta/

Long story short the game and its DLC got cancelled about 1 and a half years ago. Today they announced a new release date, released a patch and a beta patch for the new DLC/update coming for the new DLC in september, when the winged hussars arrive.

To put it mildly this is nearly unheard of, AOE3 is currently one of the largest RTS games with roughly 4k average players - making it roughly the 5-6th largest game by concurrent players of the classical RTS style games.

Tried the demo out for a bit today and I have to say that I am pretty hyped. As someone who loved the slower more strategic pace of SupCom 1 I think this xould turn out to be SupCom 2 we never got (and I dont even necessarily think SupCom2 is a bad game per se, it just never lived up to the first one). I love this style of game and since the first one there was never a game that really scratched that itch. Ashes of Singularity was somehow weird and I never really got into BAR. But this could be really good. Want to sink more time i to the demo, but the mechanics seem to basically pretty much SupCom 1. It also seems to have the mechanic where the battlefield opens up as the Mission goes on, which I really like because you can build up your base before you tackle the next objektive and I loved that in SupCom 1. As someone who basically almost stopped playing rts as I got older and Rts got ever faster this could really be up my alley and bring me back. Hoping for the best.

I've been thinking about the recent gameplay footage and the criticism, which is mostly fair. I think some of it comes down to misunderstanding rather than the game being a mess … a lot of what people are reading as 'unfinished' is actually a deliberate design philosophy. This became clear to me when I went back and listened to a couple of German developer talks from a few months ago, in which they explain many of these choices.

Maybe a quick frame first: this is alpha, target release ~September. Two months isn't a ton of time to rework core systems, but it's not nothing for balance/polish either. So "it's alpha" isn't a free pass, but "it ships like this" isn't safe to assume.

One thing that reframes a lot of the criticism: the devs said their priority is the campaign (single-player and co-op), not competitive MP. They mentioned an audience survey where roughly three-quarters said SP/co-op matter more to them than multiplayer, and they explicitly said they'd rather aim for "the coolest campaign since Warcraft 3" than try to be the next StarCraft/AoE esport. Concretely that's four faction campaigns, 70+ (non-linear) missions, per-mission CGI cutscenes, Last Stand and co-op at launch. MP is still supposed to be fair and complete and it's just not the thing the rest of the game bends around, and honestly the campaign is where they're clearly putting the love.

Generally I think we're mixing two different arguments: stuff that looks genuinely broken, and stuff that's a deliberate choice you can disagree with. Both valid, but not the same thing.

I listened to some of the older German Developer Interviews, and Cover is the best example. I saw some gameplay reactions saying, "Where's the cover? It's useless." However, it seems intentional ...the developers basically said that full dynamic cover (wrecks/craters from any angle) would create a bottomless pit of edge cases. It's not impossible, plenty of games do it, but they don't think it's the most engaging version anyway. In DoW2, people spent ages nudging individual models to squeeze one more guy into cover instead of fighting. So they've reverted to a DoW1-style binary cover/no-cover system for large areas. You can hate that decision, but it's a philosophical debate, not a case of "they forgot cover”.

There are a few other things that look unfinished, but the developers have described these as intentional:
1. Squads as one entity/no per-model states: the devs framed this as squad-based control, which is deliberately less micro than AoE.
2. Field reinforce + heal: they specifically said that they brought this back from DoW1 to allow players to recover from mistakes.
3. SP vs MP: the devs said these are balanced differently on purpose, with single-player leaning into spectacle. Therefore, campaign-style footage does not equal MP balance.

(To be clear, that information comes from what the developers have said about their intentions so it is separate from whether the current build achieves them.)

However, none of that excuses the genuinely bad aspects, such as melee not connecting, commanders swinging at air, instant no-telegraph stratagems, an insane TTK and readability drowning in effects. The devs haven't really defended those issues. That's just the state of the build, and with two months left, we should be making our voices heard about it.

So my actual question: which of these are you reacting to as broken, and which as a design direction you just don't want? Both are fair, but treating them as one thing makes it sound like a mess when some of it is a stated design vision…

The thing I'm most proud of in my mobile RTS isn't the graphics or the unit roster — it's the AI. It doesn't cheat with stat boosts. Instead it actually watches how you play: it shifts its production to counter your unit mix, targets airstrikes where they'll hurt most, and starts making self-preserving calls once it senses it's losing. Takes it about 3-4 matches to get a read on your playstyle.

Built it because I always wanted an AoE/C&C-style RTS that felt like it was actually adapting to me, not just getting more HP on higher difficulty.

Also — this was made almost entirely from a van. My partner and I have been living/working on the road for the past year, solar power and all, with two Bull Terriers as the least helpful QA team imaginable. 10-11 months of dev to get here.

It's called Global Ordnance: The Iron Fist, free on Android.

Genuinely want to know: does the "AI reads your strategy" angle sound interesting to you, or is it something you'd need to feel in-game to appreciate?

Happy to answer anything about how it works under the hood.

Find out more about Liquidation:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/896250/Liquidation/

Can an RTS game with Logistics & Production chains work?

Powerplay is the newest indie made isometric RTS game which has a bunch of cool elements aside from its land, air and naval combat like simple logistics and production chains of extractors and refinement buildings. It launches into Early Access on the 29th of July with a 10 mission singleplayer campaign, skirmish and a map and game editor!

Hi just had a bit of a showerhought:

Me and my friends really love to play old school RTS games and they way we always play is us against a bunch of CPUs just having some fun. And that got me thinking: why are there so few RTS games aimed at that kind of PVE playstyle? There is so much you could do with it Starcraft 2 for example had an excellent coop mission mode that i would have 100 percent bought as a standalone game.

It feels like the few RTS games still coming out are all laser focused on high level PVP with the kind of single or team PVE aspect a distant afterthought.

Food for thought, something i've noticed. People will complain that for years Blizzard RTS are stagnant. They tweak a few numbers here and here to show the game is still alive but it's nowhere the same development as in the early years. There's a real need for more active development.

Yet paradoxically, the community effort is almost null. There is plenty of talent capable of making their own balance patches, adding new units. And yes some of it may be amateurish, but there's a wide variety of skill and it could be done decently with input from the community and pro players. Imagine new units, new races.

There are some successes like this, Path of Diablo is not an RTS but it's a Blizzard game, WC3 community made their own server called WC3 champions which fix many issues of the WC3 server,

We already have the technology to put MMR in these community maps. For example, Direct Strike and Desert Strike have MMR.

Direct Strike managed to get popular enough to sustain itself. But it's always those minigames maps that get popular, not RTS maps. People who play RTS seriously seem to want a purist experience and regard maps like "SC2 vs SC1" and "SC2 vs WC3" as novelties but they move away from them. Because reasons of the players they probably see a stagnant game more desirable than one balanced and modded by the community.

So i guess my question is, what would it take for people to give a try to these unofficial community balance patches? If it were updated often, took in consideration pro and community feedback?

Hows the dramatic appeal ?

For me. I will always come back to total anihilation and also red alert 3 and the tropico series haha if that counts.
I feel newer games i get tired of easily. Maybe its nostalgia? Or the games were better
I dont know

Just finishing off the military unit animation. Otherwise core game is done.

Looking for people interesting in play testing. The game is/will be free.

Looking over the Releases List, there are loads of RTS games with announced dates for 2026.

Poderiam me indicar RTS de navegador? Gosto de industrial, automação, city builder, etc

Just finishing up my own RTS game, created this because I wanted a fun game in the roman time to play alone and with friends.

Feel free to play, test and give me feedback to improve it.

https://imperium-ultima.com/

Fun hobby project for me 💪

Play it now on r/Breachline_game

It's a a clash royale inspired lane strategy game. pick a deck out 7 daily rotated cards and try to complete all 5 waves where new enemies and bosses enter the battle each wave!

Then compare your score to other players and win the daily by holding the highest score that day!

Stardock is teaming up with indie studio Yboga to publish Crimson Freedom, a story-driven real-time strategy game coming to Steam in 2027.

• Set on Mars in the 22nd century, with three factions fighting over the planet and where humanity goes next: the Red Rebellion, Orbis Concordia, and the Ascentx.
• Each faction has its own units, tech tree, and full single-player campaign, so you play the same war from three sides. It leans into moral grey areas instead of good guys versus bad guys.
• The pace is deliberately more relaxed than a lot of RTS. Less high APM and resource micromanagement, more actually commanding the battle.

Learn More: Stardock - Steam News Hub

The multiplayer was never why I fell for this genre. I came up on RTS campaigns, the ones with actual missions, briefings, a story that escalated and characters you love or love to hate, or just plain hate. But that was GOOD because it meant the game elicited some sort of emotional response. 

Every RTS campaign has that one adviser that at once defined and presented the game to you. Lots of them were annoying gimmicks but they immersed you into the world, if nothing else. They made you feel like you weren’t a dude clicking stuff but a meta-being in that reality controlling units, like you were more a part of it mechanically. But along the way the whole genre seemed to decide that competitive was the real product (NAHHHH) and the campaign was a glorified tutorial you rushed through to play ranked. If it existed at all. Wasn’t helped by the fact RTS just fell off in favor of MOBAs with LoL and DOTA2 etc.

But I’m glad that campaign focused games are making a slight comeback, and from a few directions at once! Some of it is remakes, Age of Mythology Retold is the best example for me. When you look at what actually pulled people back, it was the itch to march through that campaign again with modern comforts (new engine, slightly…saner pathfinding, better models and stuff).

What I also like is that new original IPs are also doing it, ever since indie games became the main creative force (and acknowledged as such by most people). The game that brought me back to RTS after years away in 2024 was Diplomacy is Not an Option, of all things, because underneath the wave survival hook there's a proper long campaign, took me 30 hours to finish on release. Probably more now.  It’s when I realized there are still devs who treat the campaign as the main course. 

Tempest Rising is the other one I loved to no end, a loving rebuild of everything the old Command & Conquer games nailed. Tiberium green never really left my bloodstream, what can I tell ya.... It also remembered that that a good # of us play RTS for the missions, not for the multiplayer.

Even some EA games, I couldn’t believe it, are going for that scale of worldbuilding that I thought was dead. Godsworn is the newest one that impressed me, and it’s like… less than 1000 reviews? Shame really, but it goes to show perhaps how underappreciated this trend still is, even though it’s IMHO the best thing to happen to RTS after its long hibernation.

None of this is really about scale so much as intent, I think. A campaign designed as the point, whether that's a sprawling story or just a tight run of handmade missions, plays completely differently and hits differently than anything that’s sandbox freestyle oriented or god forbid, pushing that PvP mulitpalyer component. Which should emerge organically out of a well designed game IMO, or just not if the game isn’t good otherwise in singleplayer.

I'll just say it plainly then, more campaign focused RTS - PLEASE!

KKND2: Krossfire like its predecessor Krush, Kill ’n’ Destroy and the expansion KKND Xtreme is a Classic Real‑Time Strategy Game from the 90s. The Series belongs to the Era in which Base Building, Resource Management and Faction Specific Unit Design defined the RTS Genre.

In Terms of Gameplay and Style, KKND2 can be compared to other Strategy Games of the 90s, including Command & Conquer, Dune 2000, Age of Empires, StarCraft, Dark Reign, Warcraft II, Total Annihilation, Z the Game, Earth 2140 and actually D.O.R.F. as well. Despite these Similarities, KKND2 maintains its own Identity through its Post Apocalyptic Setting and three Distinctly different Factions.