Blitz is showing the flaws of the original HW

Games Halo Wars Series
1

For those of you who don’t know Halo Wars one is seen as a stain for most of those in the RTS community. Not because it has a horrible story, music, units or a scene of uniqueness. Halo Wars 1 has all of those done pretty well especially the -Yoinking!- MUSIC! Man, that music was amazing, truly worthy of Halo. The reasons why the RTS community typically hated the game is because it was an RTS game aka Real time strategy game that didn’t really have much strategy. An FPS without any first person elements is automatically a terrible FPS right?

So to make this go alot quicker I’m going to list the 3 biggest problems with Halo Wars 1.

  1. Bigger armies assured victory.
  2. Unit diversity wasn’t needed.
  3. Rushing was too effective.

For an RTS game balancing the different play style’s without dedicated factions to them which is why seemingly no rushers exist in HW2. It’s a very hard balance that I understand. What I can’t understand is Rushing never taken seriously by the Devs, since that’s what the game eventually devolved into. You either rushed or you had honor and respect for your foe, wanting to actually challenge their mind like a true RTS gamer.

The most obvious flaw or an RTS game is that when there is a lack of unit diversity you should be punished for it. Sadly in HW1 it barely meant anything. An army of ODST’s Hawk’s Grizzly’s Needler Grunts, Vamp-Hunters, Vulture’s or Scarabs weren’t really stoppable. You just had an army dedicated to countering them (Which you didn’t because you went one to those builds) or, as I just said you had one of those builds and either stomped them because they wen’t an inferior play style or got stomped because they had the superior style which you typically knew who’d win by which team had Ander’s face all over the starting screen, hence to why she has gotten a total revamp of her army in HW2.

The most gut wrenching problem of Halo Wars 1 was, that the bigger army won. This is has alot to do with the maps having too few path’s to choose from leading to players either just attacking the enemy or defending their own base. Numbers shouldn’t be the key to victory they should be another effective of it. When you don’t have a hammer you should be able to use a scalpel. Halo Wars one didn’t have this and it seems neither will HW2 despite a massive buff to Spartan’s. There are two times I can explain to you all as to why the bigger army shouldn’t outright win. Beating a match of David and Goliath as David is what makes strategy games what they are.

Story Time: Commander and Conquer, Tiberium Wars 3, Egypt, on the 360, I GDI the enemy was NOD. Servery outgunned after my teammates had just been killed and I used the majority of my forces to wipe out the second to last enemy defeat was looking me in the eyes and laughing. I had my engineer take the resource pilon the enemy had held for too long and from their my plan began. (I’m going to change the names of the units so it can be easily understood by Halo players. No insult it’s just quicker and GDI is basically the UNSC…or the UNSC is basically the GDI but…galactic.

So I had ODST jetroopers (BULLFROGS!) with Gauss rifles and one spartan also with a jetpack and a whole alot of havok mines. The enemy base was covered in turrets and through a sniper team I could see their foundries firing up for a final attack. I spawned nothing but marines and sent them to a choke point. It was about 10 to 15 squads and I had them get entrenched. I used my BULLFROGS to get the armies attention and pulled them towards my entrenched men, escaping just with their jetpacks to regroup with my strike team of the lone Spartan and ODST’s. As my troopers held the line, my artillery gun covered them, I had my sniper scout out the enemy’s wall and BOOM went in my Spartan and ODST’s. With my sniper creeping up behind the enemy army with camo. Any enemy engineer’s behind the wall swiftly killed the turret’s were everywhere but they weren’t a problem without any power generators (yes without power your base deactivates) Covering my Spartan from the turrets, and even taking a few of them with them my bullfrogs managed to survive as my Spartan blew the enemy’s base to shreds. We took out each of their structures, and their main base unit. I looked back at my line of men, decimated by the enemy army, BUT he was faced with a choice. With no power, he had no way to regather his forces if he failed in his attack on my base. It was either push to victory in attacking an unknown enemy position OR retreat to regroup. He retreated and with it I had my sniper team spot the enemy’s army pulling back and had my Wraith chasing after them dropping bombs from across the map. By the time they had gotten to the enemy base, my Bullfrogs and Spartans had did their damage and watched as my reinforcement of pelican’s came swooping down. I had one gunship extract my surviving Bullfrogs and Spartan as as they flew away the enemy was turned into dust.

After the match I asked the guy “Why didn’t you attack my base?” he an confirmed what I assumed. With my Wraith dropping bombs on him from so far he assumed that my base was oozing with gun postilions and refused to a headstrong attack without a constant reinforcements from his base. I felt triumphant, I didn’t just amass forces and charge an army stronger then mine, I fought the enemy where they weren’t and even thought they still had the advantage of numbers they feared me and in their retreat where they had every advantage, they we’re melted by my guns since they weren’t returning fire it was fish in a barrel. The only squad of troops at the time I had ever seen do something so great was the Munnilist 10. Look them up and you’ll understand. So in honor of the 10 I named those troops the Egyptian 12. I’ve recreated them in some degree in just about every strategy game I’ve played ever since. From Supreme Commander,to Star Wars Empire at Wars, to Lord of The Rings to Universe at War to XCOM even in HW1, The Egyptian 12 know how to get it done. I would always let one of my ODST’s did in HW2 so it would actually be twelve of them instead of 13.

If I ever managed to pull off something like that for HW2 I’ll post a video for everyone to watch.

That was a bit longer then I expected it to be so if you guys want me to tell you the story of how me, my sons and grandchildren along side an army of virgins defeated over 5,000 Huns, then I’ll tell it as well. Also yes, them being -Yoink!-’s was very critical of our mission success. So remember kids, just because you haven’t gotten laid, doesn’t mean you can’t murder your way to victory.

But yeah’ that’s an example of how you should be able to have other options then re-attacking a superior force with less resources troops and powers. Numbers shouldn’t decide victory, skill should. I can only hope that it’s not to late to change things for HW2. Sorry for any mistakes, it’s pretty early in the morning for me over here.

Edit: Remember the part of where I said, If I ever we’re to pull off a win by just outplaying the enemy instead of just having better numbers I’d post it…Yeah, Honor Guard’s run really fast and tanks are slow.

2

rushing is a legit strat
quantity is a quality of its own

get good

3

" I used my BULLFROGS to get the armies attention and pulled them towards my entrenched men, escaping just with their jetpacks to regroup with my strike team of the lone Spartan and ODST’s."

“had my Wraith chasing after them dropping bombs from across the map.”

I see some inconsistency there. I never knew i could be both covenant and unsc. Even if you had a spartan manning the wraith I still doubt that story was real in the slightest.

Also rushing is a huge aspect of rts, most Starcraft wins come from quickly rushing with units instead of slowly building up. It’s not some scourge that only Halo deals with, it’s a legit and powerful strategy in rts.

4

Does anyone here know how to speak stupid? I think I need a translator for whatever the OP is saying. Luckily I did understand the main part of this post which are his three “flaws”

> 1. Bigger armies assured victory.

I think we just found Albert Einstein reincarnated. Yeah no s**t bigger armies assure victory. How is this a flaw? If you make 4 tanks and your opponent makes 5 tanks, it’s a “flaw” of the game that you lose in a fight to him? First off, you could still win that fight if you properly micro your units and he doesn’t. Secondly, this is the whole part of an RTS; to have the more efficient strategy which gets you the superior numbers along with skilled control of your units.

> 2. Unit diversity wasn’t needed.

I’ll admit that there were some solid “core” units that you pretty much always created (Scorps for example) just because their stats were that good. Why make flamethrowers to counter infantry when tanks were pretty much unbeatable. That said, there were waaaaay too many noobs in HW that didn’t think outside the box. A perfect example was the Ft. Deen impasse with those annoying as f**k walls. Constantly dropping ODST’s on the towers that activated the walls was easier and a lot less expensive to stop with flamethrowers and flashbangs than smashing your head against a LITERAL brick wall trying to get through with tanks, especially if they had cobras backing it up. Throw down a disruption bomb for good measure and your whole team can then quickly swoop in before they garrison them again or even drop MACs on you.

> 3. Rushing was too effective.

Oh look, another “rush” crybaby. Maybe it is a bit annoying that the covenant could gravity lift units to the leader and attack that way, but let’s face it. You needed to learn how to spot that, and build accordingly. Get turrets up and and immediately start production on hogs to defend yourself. A nearly dead Leader forces the covenant to make a summit to get an engineer out to heal it, lowering their warehouse count by one, a pretty big blow to their economy.

5

> 2533274944621319;3:
> " I used my BULLFROGS to get the armies attention and pulled them towards my entrenched men, escaping just with their jetpacks to regroup with my strike team of the lone Spartan and ODST’s."
>
> “had my Wraith chasing after them dropping bombs from across the map.”
>
> I see some inconsistency there. I never knew i could be both covenant and unsc. Even if you had a spartan manning the wraith I still doubt that story was real in the slightest.
>
> Also rushing is a huge aspect of rts, most Starcraft wins come from quickly rushing with units instead of slowly building up. It’s not some scourge that only Halo deals with, it’s a legit and powerful strategy in rts.

You’re clearly misunderstanding what i wrote. I didn’t say that rushing was bad but it was too powerful. Also In my post I said I’d just convert the C&C units that they could easily be understood for Halo. you didn’t even read my full post, you just cherry picked what you felt you could take apart.

On top of that there are ways to stop rushes in starcraft 2, this is why it was such a bane to fight the Zerg in Starcraft on, not because it was funny but because it was a cheap win that has gone on to legendary status because of dirty bags. no one has ever said “I love to get Zerg rushed” in those days, it was cheap and made the game feel extremely bad.

Starcraft 2 built upon it keeping that same play style but building many ways to stop it from ROLFstomping players, HW1 didn’t have defenses to rushes and it was a massive problem for the game.

6

Wat? In what RTS is rushing disrespectful? I never played Halo Wars much so maybe you’re right, I’m just confused if this is the case.

In the RTS I played the good games (I mean the expert level, ultra competitive, clanwar games I took part in) were between players who aggressively rushed (when it was still effective) and microd well, both fighting all the time, then surviving, gradually upgrading as rushing went on.

Eventually the fights would transform into more army style battles. Eventually heroes or more powerful units were slowly mixed with weaker. Eventually there were fully upgraded armies and powers facing off, using map terrain, Unit combinations, and clever tactics to gain an advantage.
Having respect for opponent normally doesn’t involve not rushing that’s an odd statement

7

> 2535458666808200;4:
> Does anyone here know how to speak stupid? I think I need a translator for whatever the OP is saying. Luckily I did understand the main part of this post which are his three “flaws”
>
>
> > 1. Bigger armies assured victory.
>
> I think we just found Albert Einstein reincarnated. Yeah no st bigger armies assure victory. How is this a flaw? If you make 4 tanks and your opponent makes 5 tanks, it’s a “flaw” of the game that you lose in a fight to him? First off, you could still win that fight if you properly micro your units and he doesn’t. Secondly, this is the whole part of an RTS; to have the more efficient strategy which gets you the superior numbers along with skilled control of your units.
>
>
> > 2. Unit diversity wasn’t needed.
>
> I’ll admit that there were some solid “core” units that you pretty much always created (Scorps for example) just because their stats were that good. Why make flamethrowers to counter infantry when tanks were pretty much unbeatable. That said, there were waaaaay too many noobs in HW that didn’t think outside the box. A perfect example was the Ft. Deen impasse with those annoying as fk walls. Constantly dropping ODST’s on the towers that activated the walls was easier and a lot less expensive to stop with flamethrowers and flashbangs than smashing your head against a LITERAL brick wall trying to get through with tanks, especially if they had cobras backing it up. Throw down a disruption bomb for good measure and your whole team can then quickly swoop in before they garrison them again or even drop MACs on you.
>
>
> > 3. Rushing was too effective.
>
> Oh look, another “rush” crybaby. Maybe it is a bit annoying that the covenant could gravity lift units to the leader and attack that way, but let’s face it. You needed to learn how to spot that, and build accordingly. Get turrets up and and immediately start production on hogs to defend yourself. A nearly dead Leader forces the covenant to make a summit to get an engineer out to heal it, lowering their warehouse count by one, a pretty big blow to their economy.

Insults really the first way you want to step onto this field? What do you get besides everyone’s opinion of you falling? Anyways let’s get on to this.

  1. Yeah that’s my point in HW1 Micro didn’t mean anything just because someone has a larger army doesn’t mean they should win. Numbers aren’t what should automatically give someone a victory skill should and since the maps we’re so closed in larger armies with AOE would always do better then any kind of constructive tactics, such as flanking or proper micro managing. In HW1 micro didn’t exist outside of your base, that’s a problem for an RTS game.

  2. Nothing much to say here, you agree unit diversity fell apart in HW1.

  3. I have no problem with rushing, I played C&C3 TW rushing is half of that game with the Scrin and NOD. The problem with rushing is when it’s too powerful aka -Yoinking!- ZERG RUSHING in the OG Starcraft. There was nothing fun about that and it didn’t feel strategic it was the enemy just sending wave after wave at you with no really thought about their attach which is why in Starcraft 2 it was nerfed…sort of. They gave the other factions ways defend against it instead of doing nothing.

The counter of rushing shouldn’t be rushing, then it just leads to the same problem HW1 had which was literally everyone rushing because you had to rush the rushers in that game. You know it’d be a great question to ask the people in person? If the same strategy must be used to stop the one being used against it, then it’s not healthy for the game. On top of that you add on the fact that it’s the most prominent and powerful strategy in the game and all you get is a clown fiesta better known as Halo Wars 1 Online.

8

> 2533274833309866;6:
> Wat? In what RTS is rushing disrespectful? I never played Halo Wars much so maybe you’re right, I’m just confused if this is the case.
>
> In the RTS I played the good games (I mean the expert level, ultra competitive, clanwar games I took part in) were between players who aggressively rushed (when it was still effective) and microd well, both fighting all the time, then surviving, gradually upgrading as rushing went on.
>
> Eventually the fights would transform into more army style battles. Eventually heroes or more powerful units were slowly mixed with weaker. Eventually there were fully upgraded armies and powers facing off, using map terrain, Unit combinations, and clever tactics to gain an advantage.
> Having respect for opponent normally doesn’t involve not rushing that’s an odd statement

Well there’s abit of history behind why it became sour but long story short it’s always been seen as the casual’s way to play. Instead of actually challenging your opponents mind Rusher’s just attack and get it over with.

In some RTS games there we’re unspoken rules of not attacking the other player until after a certain time limit. It was the equivalent of a gentlemen’s duel. You take 5 paces and fire, you could be a skumbag and fire on your first step but then you’re seen as well…a skumbag. Different games of course had different communities, as I said before I played alot of C&C3 where this didn’t exist since two of the three factions we’re rush based, but unlike in Halo Wars, rushing wasn’t META and didn’t guarantee a victory. It mostly was used as a way to weaken your foe because they could become more powerful in time such as the Scrin summoning literal armadas to the battlefield. It hurt them allowing for you to then kill them with a slow burn.

9

I was really good at one RTS and there were always complaints about rushing, but they were all from noobs who got bashed and didn’t want to adapt or learn how to counter rushes. The 10 min no rush games were favored by nabs so they wouldn’t hopelessly die in 5 minutes and would get to build what units they wanted, instead of being strategic and investing time to learn competitive play, where with that knowledge they could almost play however they want and still win.

Of course they were still bad at the game so once 10 mins of respect time was alloted, they would be countered, fail at controlling units, not take proper map control, or just make units that are bad in the scenario, and die in 5 minutes anyway.

I think Halo Wars is too dumb of an RTS - there aren’t enough tactics to counter a rush because the fundamentals (how players gain resources, how many tactics players have access to either defend, turtle, rush, creep) how structures are stagnant locations, are way too simple.
In the game I spoke of a rush could be intelligently crushed if knowledgeable enough - forcing the rushing enemy to switch tactics or die - but HW is too simple to have such a thing in its limited “box of tricks”

10

> 2535439553582357;7:
> 1 Micro didn’t mean anything just because someone has a larger army doesn’t mean they should win.

Yes it should. What part of this do you not understand. If you can’t get this through your head then it’s going to be impossible to debate this with you because this is a fundamental part of an RTS. If you get out produced you lose because you were out MACROED instead out microed. Your opponent had the better build order, better resource allocation and better timing. And in a game like HW were buildings can only go in a certain order due to build pad production being done one at a time, it’s not hard to just look up the most effecient build order to maximize speed. You say you played C&C3, so you would know that if you’re going to throw a crane into your build order (which if I remember correctly is pointless, I don’t think I’ve seen any competitive game where cranes were used) that will change things up significantly. Then throw in things like Tiberium spikes to be captured (meaning you need engineers so a possible barracks 1st BO) and you’ve got a similar situation with hooks in HW. If you can’t get the eco right then you’re going to get out played.
And the keyword here is it SHOULD. You can have two equally skilled players fight one another who have the same micro ability but in the end a bigger number is just going to win against a lower one. But it doesn’t always happen. Best example is hog wars. There will be situations where you may have a hog or two collecting crates and you run into their hogs with most of yours. Ramming with the full health hogs, pulling the weak ones out and keeping them a safe distance is all extremly micro intensive it completely contradicts your whole point that micro doesn’t exist in HW1. Tanks are easy to micro due to their speed and clunkiness for sure, so take that more as a macro example than a micro one. And my point still stands, FF and canni all on one tank while the opponent spreads them out and you will win even when slightly outnumbered.

> 2535439553582357;7:
> 2. Nothing much to say here, you agree unit diversity fell apart in HW1.

Doesn’t mean we won’t see a similar situation in HW2. It all depends on the numbers. However, don’t confuse promoting unit diversity with FORCING unit diversity which is what Blitz does. It’s all due to the rng nature of the card game. Say I have point A and I want to grab point B and I know they have a Jackrabbit/Warthog/Ghost ninjaing points. If given the choice between a tank and a cyclops, i’d put the tank to contest the point. But I don’t have a tank in my hand, so I cycle til I get one. First off, cycling is going to make my 110 Scorpion now cost an X additional amount. Let’s say I cycled 4 times to get it. So now my tank cost 130 energy. A cyclops costs 100 less. It certainly makes sense to put down a cyclops that’s already in my hand, and it will be suitable to deal with a lone scout unit, but that’s not what I wanted. It’s only the best of what I have currently in my situation. This is not a choice to improve unit diversity, it’s improvising. If they suddenly send a banshee to cap that point, he’s useless, and the tank I actually wanted would have fared better.

> 2535439553582357;7:
> 3. I have no problem with rushing, I played C&C3 TW rushing is half of that game with the Scrin and NOD. The problem with rushing is when it’s too powerful aka -Yoinking!- ZERG RUSHING in the OG Starcraft. There was nothing fun about that and it didn’t feel strategic it was the enemy just sending wave after wave at you with no really thought about their attach which is why in Starcraft 2 it was nerfed…sort of. They gave the other factions ways defend against it instead of doing nothing.

And here I think you’re just clueless spewing anecdotes. The Koreans played SC for over 10 years. And Zerg were actually the least played competitively depending on what league you look at. Sometimes they came in at second. Terran dominated for the most part after they caught on how powerful Spider mines were and went Vulture/Siege tank as the dominant meta. So please enlighten as to this “zerg rush” that you can’t seem to handle. Are you telling me you can’t wall off properly before you get attacked by some zerglings? “Wave after wave”??? Go bring me a vid of highly ranked players playing BW and show me this supposed endless attack. Also, have you never heard of the 6 pool in SC2? It was even used (sparingly) in pro matches against Protoss but anyone caught off guard by it can lose to it. It’s fallen out of favor nowadays due to how predictable it is and properly walling your ramp off, but it shows you have no idea what you’re talking about. What “ways [to] defend against it” aside from what you could do from brood war over 10 years ago; WALLING YOUR RAMPS???

> 2535439553582357;7:
> The counter of rushing shouldn’t be rushing, then it just leads to the same problem HW1 had which was literally everyone rushing because you had to rush the rushers in that game.

You need units to defend yourself. If a game allows you to build units that early, then you have to or you will not be good at that game. It’s that simple. You claim you have no problem with rushing and yet whine about how it’s “too” effective. What you’re really saying is “I shouldn’t be getting rushed until i’m more than prepared for it and can easily beat it off after having an arbitrary amount of time to build up” It’s still possible to boom in this game, but it’s not a wise decision against Covies due to the earlier attack advantage they have. If you’re going to be stubborn and cry that you should be allowed to boom and play until YOU’RE ready for his attack, then you are not ok with rushing and you’re going to fail at this game. Rushing is a prominent tactic in MANY games. Not just this one. It is a fundamental strategy in RTS’s to attack your opponent when you have an army and they don’t. Go watch Drushes in AoE2. You don’t see them on Black Forest because they wall off the openings asap but on Arabia it is a strategy prevalent to the map just like how in HW1 with certain hooks (Like the walls on Tundra) there are strategies that work and ones that don’t. You’re just bad and can’t figure out how to properly utilize them.

11

Unit diversity was needed but I do have to agree with lack of strategy to a point. I love HW1 but it is lacking in a lot of areas I believe because of console limitations and development issues. Ambient wildlife would be cool, more cover like buildings and other things would be cool.

12

> 2535458666808200;10:
> > 2535439553582357;7:
> > 1 Micro didn’t mean anything just because someone has a larger army doesn’t mean they should win.
>
> Yes it should. What part of this do you not understand. If you can’t get this through your head then it’s going to be impossible to debate this with you because this is a fundamental part of an RTS. If you get out produced you lose because you were out MACROED instead out microed. Your opponent had the better build order, better resource allocation and better timing. And in a game like HW were buildings can only go in a certain order due to build pad production being done one at a time, it’s not hard to just look up the most effecient build order to maximize speed. You say you played C&C3, so you would know that if you’re going to throw a crane into your build order (which if I remember correctly is pointless, I don’t think I’ve seen any competitive game where cranes were used) that will change things up significantly. Then throw in things like Tiberium spikes to be captured (meaning you need engineers so a possible barracks 1st BO) and you’ve got a similar situation with hooks in HW. If you can’t get the eco right then you’re going to get out played.
> And the keyword here is it SHOULD. You can have two equally skilled players fight one another who have the same micro ability but in the end a bigger number is just going to win against a lower one. But it doesn’t always happen. Best example is hog wars. There will be situations where you may have a hog or two collecting crates and you run into their hogs with most of yours. Ramming with the full health hogs, pulling the weak ones out and keeping them a safe distance is all extremly micro intensive it completely contradicts your whole point that micro doesn’t exist in HW1. Tanks are easy to micro due to their speed and clunkiness for sure, so take that more as a macro example than a micro one. And my point still stands, FF and canni all on one tank while the opponent spreads them out and you will win even when slightly outnumbered.
>
>
> > 2535439553582357;7:
> > 2. Nothing much to say here, you agree unit diversity fell apart in HW1.
>
> Doesn’t mean we won’t see a similar situation in HW2. It all depends on the numbers. However, don’t confuse promoting unit diversity with FORCING unit diversity which is what Blitz does. It’s all due to the rng nature of the card game. Say I have point A and I want to grab point B and I know they have a Jackrabbit/Warthog/Ghost ninjaing points. If given the choice between a tank and a cyclops, i’d put the tank to contest the point. But I don’t have a tank in my hand, so I cycle til I get one. First off, cycling is going to make my 110 Scorpion now cost an X additional amount. Let’s say I cycled 4 times to get it. So now my tank cost 130 energy. A cyclops costs 100 less. It certainly makes sense to put down a cyclops that’s already in my hand, and it will be suitable to deal with a lone scout unit, but that’s not what I wanted. It’s only the best of what I have currently in my situation. This is not a choice to improve unit diversity, it’s improvising. If they suddenly send a banshee to cap that point, he’s useless, and the tank I actually wanted would have fared better.
>
>
> > 2535439553582357;7:
> > 3. I have no problem with rushing, I played C&C3 TW rushing is half of that game with the Scrin and NOD. The problem with rushing is when it’s too powerful aka -Yoinking!- ZERG RUSHING in the OG Starcraft. There was nothing fun about that and it didn’t feel strategic it was the enemy just sending wave after wave at you with no really thought about their attach which is why in Starcraft 2 it was nerfed…sort of. They gave the other factions ways defend against it instead of doing nothing.
>
> And here I think you’re just clueless spewing anecdotes. The Koreans played SC for over 10 years. And Zerg were actually the least played competitively depending on what league you look at. Sometimes they came in at second. Terran dominated for the most part after they caught on how powerful Spider mines were and went Vulture/Siege tank as the dominant meta. So please enlighten as to this “zerg rush” that you can’t seem to handle. Are you telling me you can’t wall off properly before you get attacked by some zerglings? “Wave after wave”??? Go bring me a vid of highly ranked players playing BW and show me this supposed endless attack. Also, have you never heard of the 6 pool in SC2? It was even used (sparingly) in pro matches against Protoss but anyone caught off guard by it can lose to it. It’s fallen out of favor nowadays due to how predictable it is and properly walling your ramp off, but it shows you have no idea what you’re talking about. What “ways [to] defend against it” aside from what you could do from brood war over 10 years ago; WALLING YOUR RAMPS???
>
>
> > 2535439553582357;7:
> > The counter of rushing shouldn’t be rushing, then it just leads to the same problem HW1 had which was literally everyone rushing because you had to rush the rushers in that game.
>
> You need units to defend yourself. If a game allows you to build units that early, then you have to or you will not be good at that game. It’s that simple. You claim you have no problem with rushing and yet whine about how it’s “too” effective. What you’re really saying is “I shouldn’t be getting rushed until i’m more than prepared for it and can easily beat it off after having an arbitrary amount of time to build up” It’s still possible to boom in this game, but it’s not a wise decision against Covies due to the earlier attack advantage they have. If you’re going to be stubborn and cry that you should be allowed to boom and play until YOU’RE ready for his attack, then you are not ok with rushing and you’re going to fail at this game. Rushing is a prominent tactic in MANY games. Not just this one. It is a fundamental strategy in RTS’s to attack your opponent when you have an army and they don’t. Go watch Drushes in AoE2. You don’t see them on Black Forest because they wall off the openings asap but on Arabia it is a strategy prevalent to the map just like how in HW1 with certain hooks (Like the walls on Tundra) there are strategies that work and ones that don’t. You’re just bad and can’t figure out how to properly utilize them.

Everything you can say or will has been made completely invalidated by saying Having a bigger army should a guarantee victory. This post is useless because you oblivious don’t understand how a strategy game should work. if I can defeat 5,000 Mongrols with less then 500 troops in on Creative Assembly game what stops me from succeeding against insurmountable odds in another game of the same gerne made by the same company? I know poor developmental.

It is clear to me that you only stuck to Halo Wars 1 because you know nothing of RTS games true might. Strategy is seemingly beyond you. I have nothing to say to you that won’t simply be wasted onto you besides these last two passages. Good luck in whatever you do, because it seems you’ll really need it.

13

> 2533274833309866;9:
> I was really good at one RTS and there were always complaints about rushing, but they were all from noobs who got bashed and didn’t want to adapt or learn how to counter rushes. The 10 min no rush games were favored by nabs so they wouldn’t hopelessly die in 5 minutes and would get to build what units they wanted, instead of being strategic and investing time to learn competitive play, where with that knowledge they could almost play however they want and still win.
>
> Of course they were still bad at the game so once 10 mins of respect time was alloted, they would be countered, fail at controlling units, not take proper map control, or just make units that are bad in the scenario, and die in 5 minutes anyway.
>
> I think Halo Wars is too dumb of an RTS - there aren’t enough tactics to counter a rush because the fundamentals (how players gain resources, how many tactics players have access to either defend, turtle, rush, creep) how structures are stagnant locations, are way too simple.
> In the game I spoke of a rush could be intelligently crushed if knowledgeable enough - forcing the rushing enemy to switch tactics or die - but HW is too simple to have such a thing in its limited “box of tricks”

I’ve been playing strategy games for 20 years now. Other then fighting games it’s my favorite genre thought my skill in those has declined over the years which is why I have such a huge focus on RTS now. I still play the hell out of Empire at War and I have it modded to all hell. I even have Shogun Total War 2 running in the background right now playing as the Chosokabe. So please show me some respect by understanding that I am in no one terrible at RTS games. It’s been my passion., from the worse to the est I’ve experienced RTS in it’s fullest. A teacher back in high school saw my fay of the games and took me to a World of Tanks convention senior year. Not the video game, the table top. This is what defines my true nerdism so again, please respect that to some degree coming from an RTS fan to another.

On topic of Halo Wars yeah, that’s the point I was saying in my OP. Halo Wars has the flaw of having too little of a map to work with making Rushers incredibly strong with the only way to beat them being to join them. It’s a flaw in the game that hopefully will be put to rest in this sequel otherwise, like the first game it’ll just been seen as another casual cash grab by the RTS community sucking off the Halo name’s -Yoink!-. The worst part is how Creative Assembly in this decade has had a bumpy road with their games so it doesn’t help decipher if this will be the next total war or just something we never speak of again.

14

That’s cool you’re experienced, did you ever play clanwars level or vs community experts of those games? (I don’t mind, just wonderin) I never played many RTS - or many games in general - just went all in with LOTR.

I don’t think the maps are the problem with rushing, bigger or barricaded no rush maps wouldn’t improve gameplay. Tbh this game will always be very casual cuz it’s impossible to control everything at the speed required and impossible to select micro / macro options for a yuge skill gap RTS. That’s ok but with low skill gap and no map/campaign/ creator and editor, its life will be kinda short. I still wanna see how it turns out of course

15

> 2535458666808200;4:
> Does anyone here know how to speak stupid? I think I need a translator for whatever the OP is saying. Luckily I did understand the main part of this post which are his three “flaws”
>
>
> > 1. Bigger armies assured victory.
>
> I think we just found Albert Einstein reincarnated. Yeah no st bigger armies assure victory. How is this a flaw? If you make 4 tanks and your opponent makes 5 tanks, it’s a “flaw” of the game that you lose in a fight to him? First off, you could still win that fight if you properly micro your units and he doesn’t. Secondly, this is the whole part of an RTS; to have the more efficient strategy which gets you the superior numbers along with skilled control of your units.
>
>
> > 2. Unit diversity wasn’t needed.
>
> I’ll admit that there were some solid “core” units that you pretty much always created (Scorps for example) just because their stats were that good. Why make flamethrowers to counter infantry when tanks were pretty much unbeatable. That said, there were waaaaay too many noobs in HW that didn’t think outside the box. A perfect example was the Ft. Deen impasse with those annoying as fk walls. Constantly dropping ODST’s on the towers that activated the walls was easier and a lot less expensive to stop with flamethrowers and flashbangs than smashing your head against a LITERAL brick wall trying to get through with tanks, especially if they had cobras backing it up. Throw down a disruption bomb for good measure and your whole team can then quickly swoop in before they garrison them again or even drop MACs on you.
>
>
> > 3. Rushing was too effective.
>
> Oh look, another “rush” crybaby. Maybe it is a bit annoying that the covenant could gravity lift units to the leader and attack that way, but let’s face it. You needed to learn how to spot that, and build accordingly. Get turrets up and and immediately start production on hogs to defend yourself. A nearly dead Leader forces the covenant to make a summit to get an engineer out to heal it, lowering their warehouse count by one, a pretty big blow to their economy.

U wanna be a bigger jerk or are u just doing it out of the kindness of your heart?

16

> 2535439553582357;1:
> For those of you who don’t know Halo Wars one is seen as a stain for most of those in the RTS community. Not because it has a horrible story, music, units or a scene of uniqueness. Halo Wars 1 has all of those done pretty well especially the -Yoinking!- MUSIC! Man, that music was amazing, truly worthy of Halo. The reasons why the RTS community typically hated the game is because it was an RTS game aka Real time strategy game that didn’t really have much strategy. An FPS without any first person elements is automatically a terrible FPS right?
>
> So to make this go alot quicker I’m going to list the 3 biggest problems with Halo Wars 1.
>
> 1. Bigger armies assured victory.
> 2. Unit diversity wasn’t needed.
> 3. Rushing was too effective.
>
> For an RTS game balancing the different play style’s without dedicated factions to them which is why seemingly no rushers exist in HW2. It’s a very hard balance that I understand. What I can’t understand is Rushing never taken seriously by the Devs, since that’s what the game eventually devolved into. You either rushed or you had honor and respect for your foe, wanting to actually challenge their mind like a true RTS gamer.
>
> The most obvious flaw or an RTS game is that when there is a lack of unit diversity you should be punished for it. Sadly in HW1 it barely meant anything. An army of ODST’s Hawk’s Grizzly’s Needler Grunts, Vamp-Hunters, Vulture’s or Scarabs weren’t really stoppable. You just had an army dedicated to countering them (Which you didn’t because you went one to those builds) or, as I just said you had one of those builds and either stomped them because they wen’t an inferior play style or got stomped because they had the superior style which you typically knew who’d win by which team had Ander’s face all over the starting screen, hence to why she has gotten a total revamp of her army in HW2.
>
> The most gut wrenching problem of Halo Wars 1 was, that the bigger army won. This is has alot to do with the maps having too few path’s to choose from leading to players either just attacking the enemy or defending their own base. Numbers shouldn’t be the key to victory they should be another effective of it. When you don’t have a hammer you should be able to use a scalpel. Halo Wars one didn’t have this and it seems neither will HW2 despite a massive buff to Spartan’s. There are two times I can explain to you all as to why the bigger army shouldn’t outright win. Beating a match of David and Goliath as David is what makes strategy games what they are.
>
> Story Time: Commander and Conquer, Tiberium Wars 3, Egypt, on the 360, I GDI the enemy was NOD. Servery outgunned after my teammates had just been killed and I used the majority of my forces to wipe out the second to last enemy defeat was looking me in the eyes and laughing. I had my engineer take the resource pilon the enemy had held for too long and from their my plan began. (I’m going to change the names of the units so it can be easily understood by Halo players. No insult it’s just quicker and GDI is basically the UNSC…or the UNSC is basically the GDI but…galactic.
>
> So I had ODST jetroopers (BULLFROGS!) with Gauss rifles and one spartan also with a jetpack and a whole alot of havok mines. The enemy base was covered in turrets and through a sniper team I could see their foundries firing up for a final attack. I spawned nothing but marines and sent them to a choke point. It was about 10 to 15 squads and I had them get entrenched. I used my BULLFROGS to get the armies attention and pulled them towards my entrenched men, escaping just with their jetpacks to regroup with my strike team of the lone Spartan and ODST’s. As my troopers held the line, my artillery gun covered them, I had my sniper scout out the enemy’s wall and BOOM went in my Spartan and ODST’s. With my sniper creeping up behind the enemy army with camo. Any enemy engineer’s behind the wall swiftly killed the turret’s were everywhere but they weren’t a problem without any power generators (yes without power your base deactivates) Covering my Spartan from the turrets, and even taking a few of them with them my bullfrogs managed to survive as my Spartan blew the enemy’s base to shreds. We took out each of their structures, and their main base unit. I looked back at my line of men, decimated by the enemy army, BUT he was faced with a choice. With no power, he had no way to regather his forces if he failed in his attack on my base. It was either push to victory in attacking an unknown enemy position OR retreat to regroup. He retreated and with it I had my sniper team spot the enemy’s army pulling back and had my Wraith chasing after them dropping bombs from across the map. By the time they had gotten to the enemy base, my Bullfrogs and Spartans had did their damage and watched as my reinforcement of pelican’s came swooping down. I had one gunship extract my surviving Bullfrogs and Spartan as as they flew away the enemy was turned into dust.
>
> After the match I asked the guy “Why didn’t you attack my base?” he an confirmed what I assumed. With my Wraith dropping bombs on him from so far he assumed that my base was oozing with gun postilions and refused to a headstrong attack without a constant reinforcements from his base. I felt triumphant, I didn’t just amass forces and charge an army stronger then mine, I fought the enemy where they weren’t and even thought they still had the advantage of numbers they feared me and in their retreat where they had every advantage, they we’re melted by my guns since they weren’t returning fire it was fish in a barrel. The only squad of troops at the time I had ever seen do something so great was the Munnilist 10. Look them up and you’ll understand. So in honor of the 10 I named those troops the Egyptian 12. I’ve recreated them in some degree in just about every strategy game I’ve played ever since. From Supreme Commander,to Star Wars Empire at Wars, to Lord of The Rings to Universe at War to XCOM even in HW1, The Egyptian 12 know how to get it done. I would always let one of my ODST’s did in HW2 so it would actually be twelve of them instead of 13.
>
> If I ever managed to pull off something like that for HW2 I’ll post a video for everyone to watch.
>
> That was a bit longer then I expected it to be so if you guys want me to tell you the story of how me, my sons and grandchildren along side an army of virgins defeated over 5,000 Huns, then I’ll tell it as well. Also yes, them being -Yoink!-’s was very critical of our mission success. So remember kids, just because you haven’t gotten laid, doesn’t mean you can’t murder your way to victory.
>
> But yeah’ that’s an example of how you should be able to have other options then re-attacking a superior force with less resources troops and powers. Numbers shouldn’t decide victory, skill should. I can only hope that it’s not to late to change things for HW2. Sorry for any mistakes, it’s pretty early in the morning for me over here.

Superior numbers in any game usually guaranteed victory so that argument is out the window,unit diversity I would agree with to an extent,there was some diversity but units like honor guards ghosts choppers flamethrowers were just left in the cold.And while rushing was annoying to deal with,there were ways to counter

17

Outside of aoe, halo wars is really the only rts game I have gotten in to. and rushing was usually apart of that game also, you kind of wanted to take out those more powerful Civilization before they got a chance to build up there army, really only rushing I saw in halo wars , that I though was an issue was the prophet rushing with the cleansing beam. I thought that leader in general was unbalanced. About armies its about trying to counter the enemies units, not necessarily the bigger army wins, although numbers do help. its about how there deployed.

18

> You either rushed or you had honor and respect for your foe, wanting to actually challenge their mind like a true RTS gamer.

> The most gut wrenching problem of Halo Wars 1 was, that the bigger army won.

> So remember kids, just because you haven’t gotten laid, doesn’t mean you can’t murder your way to victory.

What is this garbage?

You dance around a few decent points (unit diversity, alternate routes for attack) but never really nail them down effectively. Really, this post is a just a mess.

19

> 2535439553582357;1:
> For those of you who don’t know Halo Wars one is seen as a stain for most of those in the RTS community. Not because it has a horrible story, music, units or a scene of uniqueness. Halo Wars 1 has all of those done pretty well especially the -Yoinking!- MUSIC! Man, that music was amazing, truly worthy of Halo. The reasons why the RTS community typically hated the game is because it was an RTS game aka Real time strategy game that didn’t really have much strategy. An FPS without any first person elements is automatically a terrible FPS right?
>
> So to make this go alot quicker I’m going to list the 3 biggest problems with Halo Wars 1.
>
> 1. Bigger armies assured victory.
> 2. Unit diversity wasn’t needed.
> 3. Rushing was too effective.
>
> For an RTS game balancing the different play style’s without dedicated factions to them which is why seemingly no rushers exist in HW2. It’s a very hard balance that I understand. What I can’t understand is Rushing never taken seriously by the Devs, since that’s what the game eventually devolved into. You either rushed or you had honor and respect for your foe, wanting to actually challenge their mind like a true RTS gamer.
>
> The most obvious flaw or an RTS game is that when there is a lack of unit diversity you should be punished for it. Sadly in HW1 it barely meant anything. An army of ODST’s Hawk’s Grizzly’s Needler Grunts, Vamp-Hunters, Vulture’s or Scarabs weren’t really stoppable. You just had an army dedicated to countering them (Which you didn’t because you went one to those builds) or, as I just said you had one of those builds and either stomped them because they wen’t an inferior play style or got stomped because they had the superior style which you typically knew who’d win by which team had Ander’s face all over the starting screen, hence to why she has gotten a total revamp of her army in HW2.
>
> The most gut wrenching problem of Halo Wars 1 was, that the bigger army won. This is has alot to do with the maps having too few path’s to choose from leading to players either just attacking the enemy or defending their own base. Numbers shouldn’t be the key to victory they should be another effective of it. When you don’t have a hammer you should be able to use a scalpel. Halo Wars one didn’t have this and it seems neither will HW2 despite a massive buff to Spartan’s. There are two times I can explain to you all as to why the bigger army shouldn’t outright win. Beating a match of David and Goliath as David is what makes strategy games what they are.
>
> Story Time: Commander and Conquer, Tiberium Wars 3, Egypt, on the 360, I GDI the enemy was NOD. Servery outgunned after my teammates had just been killed and I used the majority of my forces to wipe out the second to last enemy defeat was looking me in the eyes and laughing. I had my engineer take the resource pilon the enemy had held for too long and from their my plan began. (I’m going to change the names of the units so it can be easily understood by Halo players. No insult it’s just quicker and GDI is basically the UNSC…or the UNSC is basically the GDI but…galactic.
>
> So I had ODST jetroopers (BULLFROGS!) with Gauss rifles and one spartan also with a jetpack and a whole alot of havok mines. The enemy base was covered in turrets and through a sniper team I could see their foundries firing up for a final attack. I spawned nothing but marines and sent them to a choke point. It was about 10 to 15 squads and I had them get entrenched. I used my BULLFROGS to get the armies attention and pulled them towards my entrenched men, escaping just with their jetpacks to regroup with my strike team of the lone Spartan and ODST’s. As my troopers held the line, my artillery gun covered them, I had my sniper scout out the enemy’s wall and BOOM went in my Spartan and ODST’s. With my sniper creeping up behind the enemy army with camo. Any enemy engineer’s behind the wall swiftly killed the turret’s were everywhere but they weren’t a problem without any power generators (yes without power your base deactivates) Covering my Spartan from the turrets, and even taking a few of them with them my bullfrogs managed to survive as my Spartan blew the enemy’s base to shreds. We took out each of their structures, and their main base unit. I looked back at my line of men, decimated by the enemy army, BUT he was faced with a choice. With no power, he had no way to regather his forces if he failed in his attack on my base. It was either push to victory in attacking an unknown enemy position OR retreat to regroup. He retreated and with it I had my sniper team spot the enemy’s army pulling back and had my Wraith chasing after them dropping bombs from across the map. By the time they had gotten to the enemy base, my Bullfrogs and Spartans had did their damage and watched as my reinforcement of pelican’s came swooping down. I had one gunship extract my surviving Bullfrogs and Spartan as as they flew away the enemy was turned into dust.
>
> After the match I asked the guy “Why didn’t you attack my base?” he an confirmed what I assumed. With my Wraith dropping bombs on him from so far he assumed that my base was oozing with gun postilions and refused to a headstrong attack without a constant reinforcements from his base. I felt triumphant, I didn’t just amass forces and charge an army stronger then mine, I fought the enemy where they weren’t and even thought they still had the advantage of numbers they feared me and in their retreat where they had every advantage, they we’re melted by my guns since they weren’t returning fire it was fish in a barrel. The only squad of troops at the time I had ever seen do something so great was the Munnilist 10. Look them up and you’ll understand. So in honor of the 10 I named those troops the Egyptian 12. I’ve recreated them in some degree in just about every strategy game I’ve played ever since. From Supreme Commander,to Star Wars Empire at Wars, to Lord of The Rings to Universe at War to XCOM even in HW1, The Egyptian 12 know how to get it done. I would always let one of my ODST’s did in HW2 so it would actually be twelve of them instead of 13.
>
> If I ever managed to pull off something like that for HW2 I’ll post a video for everyone to watch.
>
> That was a bit longer then I expected it to be so if you guys want me to tell you the story of how me, my sons and grandchildren along side an army of virgins defeated over 5,000 Huns, then I’ll tell it as well. Also yes, them being -Yoink!-’s was very critical of our mission success. So remember kids, just because you haven’t gotten laid, doesn’t mean you can’t murder your way to victory.
>
> But yeah’ that’s an example of how you should be able to have other options then re-attacking a superior force with less resources troops and powers. Numbers shouldn’t decide victory, skill should. I can only hope that it’s not to late to change things for HW2. Sorry for any mistakes, it’s pretty early in the morning for me over here.

Dam dude, if any one else actually reads all that ill be impressed, i like where you sre going with this, lets make this game better.

20

> 2535458666808200;4:
> Does anyone here know how to speak stupid? I think I need a translator for whatever the OP is saying. Luckily I did understand the main part of this post which are his three “flaws”
>
>
> > 1. Bigger armies assured victory.
>
> I think we just found Albert Einstein reincarnated. Yeah no st bigger armies assure victory. How is this a flaw? If you make 4 tanks and your opponent makes 5 tanks, it’s a “flaw” of the game that you lose in a fight to him? First off, you could still win that fight if you properly micro your units and he doesn’t. Secondly, this is the whole part of an RTS; to have the more efficient strategy which gets you the superior numbers along with skilled control of your units.
>
>
> > 2. Unit diversity wasn’t needed.
>
> I’ll admit that there were some solid “core” units that you pretty much always created (Scorps for example) just because their stats were that good. Why make flamethrowers to counter infantry when tanks were pretty much unbeatable. That said, there were waaaaay too many noobs in HW that didn’t think outside the box. A perfect example was the Ft. Deen impasse with those annoying as fk walls. Constantly dropping ODST’s on the towers that activated the walls was easier and a lot less expensive to stop with flamethrowers and flashbangs than smashing your head against a LITERAL brick wall trying to get through with tanks, especially if they had cobras backing it up. Throw down a disruption bomb for good measure and your whole team can then quickly swoop in before they garrison them again or even drop MACs on you.
>
>
> > 3. Rushing was too effective.
>
> Oh look, another “rush” crybaby. Maybe it is a bit annoying that the covenant could gravity lift units to the leader and attack that way, but let’s face it. You needed to learn how to spot that, and build accordingly. Get turrets up and and immediately start production on hogs to defend yourself. A nearly dead Leader forces the covenant to make a summit to get an engineer out to heal it, lowering their warehouse count by one, a pretty big blow to their economy.

With quote number three, the best victories, are those in which you stop someones rush of banshees or a leader rush as you explained, rushes dont always win if you know how to stop them qnd belive me there is a way.