Transcript
Speaker: Hello and welcome to the Fall of Warcast podcast where we talk about strategy games. Today we have a very exciting episode. I've been, well, paused for a bit.
Speaker: Pause it for a bit. We'll be excited for it, but then we pause it again. We're going to talk about possible turn-based strategy games versus RTS games. And yes, that was the weirdest intro I've done so far.
Speaker: With me today, I have Johan and Magnus as always. Welcome, guys. Great to be here. I am. Yeah, so they they look incredibly confused, like you see on the video feed. But we are going to talk about, essentially, RTS-strategic games, turn-based strategy games, the differences between them, the advantages and disadvantages to them, what we prefer, and whatever comes to mind during that conversation.
Speaker: and so yeah so So I'm just going to do a quick sort of poll here. Jovan and Magnus, what are you mostly, an RTS or a turn-based player?
Speaker: Well, to be completely fair, I'm in between. I'm the guy that plays turn-based game with RTS elements. But it if it came down to me on a deserted island and I had to pick one, turn-based games.
Speaker: Magnus? Yeah, I know they they sell it as an or they sold it as an RPG, but I've been playing Heroes of Might and Magic to get into the turn-based magic ah before we recorded this episode.
Speaker: ah But mostly these days, i'm ah I'm a crap RTS player ah because I never was as a kid, and I'm still crap at RTS games. But more and more, I'm an RTS player, I'd say, when I'm not playing ground strategy, and we'll be getting back to that.
Speaker: Yes, and i am definitely mostly an an RTS player, which is weird because say if you look at my Steam account, currently i have more time over the last few months on turn-based games, especially since I went on a deep dive and played ah too many of the Heroes of Magic games as well.
Speaker: But I am definitely an RTS player. That is what I prefer. That's what I grew up with. That was essentially what got me into computer gaming in the first place. RTS games and shooter games.
Speaker: And but we're going to go through a lot of what we like what we think about these games, what we prefer, don't prefer, and stuff like that. But I guess we sort of, or Magnus sort of made one of the main or the earliest points which we come to arrive at. We can just go for it all immediately.
Speaker: And it is the fact to that and an RTS demands something quite different from other strategy games. It essentially demands that you have reflexes. It's like the shooter of the strategy games.
Speaker: And the growing older, as I have been doing recently, tried to avoid growing old for a long time. Apparently i failed. ah Growing older, I have found that I'm actually a worse RTS player the older I get. Because some of like the reflexes from back when I was in my they just don't stick around.
Speaker: And if we talk about your 20s, I mean, I played out with, I'm slightly older than both of you guys, and I arrived at this kind of conclusion and six or seven years ago. I'm not fast enough for RTSs anymore. i ah I don't find them as enjoyable. I prefer my turn-based games when I'm not playing Grand Strategy or RPG um pg games.
Speaker: But There is a certain feel, especially for me. It's nostalgia when you go back to a really good RTS. I've plowed down a lot of hours in the Command & Conquer Remastered.
Speaker: And that just brings me back to being 11, 12, 13, playing on this big-ass computer and just seeing the hours just tick away.
Speaker: And it's really enjoyable, but... I also went online to try and play against other people. I failed miserably ah being almost 40 because I think I was matched against people that were not young, and but 25, 30, something like that.
Speaker: i didn't stand a chance. Yeah, but you did have like, I don't know, serious or not try hard, but kind of like a serious RTS period. Because you've talked about playing StarCraft lot until the Koreans found our service.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, I did. I mean, i was ranked in Sweden. I competed in it. But then you have to remember that is almost... Yeah, that's 20 years ago.
Speaker: yeah i mean, consistency, it you can be consistent and you can probably be good, but the reactions aren't there. but But it's nice just to to have the feel of it. say You know all the lines from the little men, you know the builds, but the reaction and the quickness is not there anymore.
Speaker: Jesus Christ, they even have ranked games 20 years ago. Oh, yeah. They started with the ranked game, the ranked servers, which they had up in Sweden. Sweden was quite competitive in that age. but And also remember, when we say when I say 20 years ago, that means I was 18, Magnus.
Speaker: Tell me more of how it was in the old days, granddad. oh we We had to cycle up to conserve the energy to get the computer running. That's why me and my brother played together because one had to pedal the bicycle to get the electricity in. The other one had to shovel us some coal in.
Speaker: but That's how it was. I'm pretty sure that's how Magnus Gaming a laptop used to work probably like two years ago. so ah simple i I just installed my games on an old defense computer and ah in a Swedish Cold War bunker.
Speaker: Exactly. no but that is, you're making a point, you want, which I think is terrifying, and that's realizing, because I play a bunch of RTSs still, and I feel sort of competent at them, and then I go online multiplayer.
Speaker: just feel like an idiot, an old, a senile idiot. I just can't, can't keep up. There is so much happening. They cannot play at a higher game speed, and I'm like, yeah no, no.
Speaker: that that No, no we we we don't use that button. We don't click that button. This is every time I play Steel Division or War No online. I'm like, okay, so this was fun. ah Maybe not for a while. Not not for a while.
Speaker: It's a bit exhausting. It is, it is. But I think that kind of dwells down to one of the big differences between RTSs and turn-based. the The quickness, the reaction time, but also RTSs give you something that a turn-based game can't give you the same sense.
Speaker: That kind of adrenaline rush yeah that I've never gotten him from a turn-based game. and There is a point to that. um Mostly when I play turn-based, I rarely play turn-based multiplayer. I'm going to do what's been Civilization with my ex.
Speaker: um And that has been interesting and fun, but it has also been incredibly calm. and You sit around half the time, you just wait for someone else to take their turn.
Speaker: you yeah You have a breather. And then you have like these, even like the deeply large scale, big, slow RTSs is still like a 40 minute game. And you can get raided the first few minutes in multiplayer and just fail.
Speaker: as you're always on edge. You have to be everywhere all the time at once. and Your ability to click between places on the map and do different things. Essentially, the faster you are, the better you are.
Speaker: there is no well There are some up the limits, I guess. You can run out of resources, you can't do more. But generally, your speed as a player is what's constraining you. um not sort of not your Not necessarily your cleverness as a strategist, but but like in just in general, your speed. haven't gotten to the place where I stop drinking coffee if I know I'm going to play online. Because the mix of them is just going to break my brain.
Speaker: You told us you were growing old. That feels like a sign of growing old. life No, no more than ah one cup of coffee for me. I'm going online tonight. Well, technically, one cup is zero cups.
Speaker: yeah No, no, no. I'm going online in an hour. where I can't have another cup right now. Yes. Jesus Christ. If any 19-year-old or even worse 15-year-old stumbles over this podcast, they're just coming to crack.
Speaker: Why are these old men talking about games? Yeah. They're not here. They're on TikTok. Yeah, probably. But this really feeds my prejudice over kind of competitive RTS games. We talked about this before, but that's... and mean, and I am prejudiced, but that's precisely my might view on or my picture of, ah like, especially competitive RTS games. That is like, it's about being fast.
Speaker: It's about knowing the meta. It's about a playing it out fast. It's about clicking things very fast. It's about being able to kind of like cope with ah intense bouts of information in a short time and generally quite short games.
Speaker: Is this just a prejudice or or have we nailed down the RTS genre? Well, I think it holds true to about 70%. And then there is Cossacks.
Speaker: like There are a few really big RTS games where but you have fairly slow, long matches, you have massive maps and stuff like that, and you don't get the same sort of adrenaline rush, just everything at once being quick.
Speaker: But on the other hand, the bigger it is, the more things you could be doing. ah So Cossacks is a game I've name checked a lot of times on this pod, but it is essentially a 70th century.
Speaker: Think of it as h of Empire times 100, and you're sort of in the right ballpark. Yeah. And there, of course, the more places you can be on your map with your like tens to twenty thousands of individual units, the more you get done, the better you are. so you have to play it fast in some ways.
Speaker: But in other ways, um you have this sort of long, slow matches. It's hard to nail down a good meta for these games because there are so many things you could be doing.
Speaker: And this is actually one of the things I love about RTS is that yes, if you play StarCraft or one of the really narrow, tight ones, you have to be a metagamer. But once it gets big enough, ah the complexity of it...
Speaker: means that it's kind of hard to just stick to a meta. There are so many ways for opponents to counter you. And even if you play a perfect meta sort of macro game, you can just have bad luck. They can surround you on a battlefield while you're not looking, or they can just surround you because they're better than you and get the bonus and kill you. And then it doesn't matter how ah good you are.
Speaker: So, and I think this is one of the the benefits of RTSs is that you can sort of move beyond the rule set in some ways and just be a very skillful player.
Speaker: Whereas in many turn-based games, you're also more dependent on like numbers go up, stuff like that. Yeah, i I can somewhat agree to that, but to go back to the competitive scene from it, what we see there, and I mean, i ah ah yeah watch a lot of League of Legends because my my girlfriend finds it fascinating. I can't for the life of me understand why.
Speaker: But there it comes down to knowing... The character you're playing, the team you're playing, but also knowing the maps. And this is the meta, this is how we're going to do it, and we have to be quicker than the other team. And I don't know how much you you watch these kind of eSports tournaments, but they also have some characters that both teams can choose to deselect.
Speaker: You are not able to pick this character. ah If you know that someone in ah team is really good with a tank... they are not allowed to play that and that character. But usually it's the same kind of... One team will always play the same setup and and the other team will always play their setup. So it's more of...
Speaker: It's not really for me. I prefer to... in The same goes for StarCraft. We know that a certain player, he always plays Zerg, for example, because he likes that, he knows that, and he knows the maps. We know that another player plays Protoss.
Speaker: And they always stick to that. and They tend not to mix it up when there's money on the line, and I can get that if it's $25,000 as a prize pot. Why would you risk it?
Speaker: Probably not. And we have we have to remember, but they are also, in the same sense as a footballer is or a tennis player or something, they do it for a living. They're an athlete. This is what they get their money from.
Speaker: But I tend to see the RTS esports scene as, not really for me, quite repetitive and...
Speaker: And not the fun way, air quotes, the fun way to play the RTS, basically. Yes. ah Just yes.
Speaker: I think that is actually one of the weird things. I love playing RTS games. Whenever I watch people play it competitively, they are just doing all the things I think or I find sort of uninteresting when playing myself.
Speaker: but it You rarely see them try something new. Yeah, and I guess that we should sort of dip into the turn-based games as well. um i promise you we're going to have a bit of a more more of a structure for the rest of the conversation. But ah one thing that's interesting, I think, about comparing RTS and turn-based is that there are very few turn-based strategy games where you have competitions at all. Yeah.
Speaker: i'm I'm struggling to even think of one. i have never seen like a good, I know there are like Civ 6 or Civ 7 events when they invite streamers to play against each other. I've never seen a good match of it.
Speaker: And i guess I guess that would be like a competitive match of of a turn-based game would essentially just be the waiting game.
Speaker: basically basically that and I think that kind of highlights the difference between a turn-based game and a strategy game that but the turn-based games they take longer they they have a certain complexity to it it's probably easier to get in to a turn-based game and start playing online than it is because you can have fun because it will take the other player at least two or three hours before they crush you Compared to an RTS game, if you go online and play, if if if you're new to a game that's been out for six months, a year, you will probably get smashed if you go online.
Speaker: So the turn-based, I think, is more beginner-friendly. because not everything happens at once. RTSs are beginner-friendly when you play the tutorial, but as we probably all have experienced, that's for single player.
Speaker: Go out and play against someone else. Basically, it's like tennis. Tennis is fun if everyone is on the same level. If someone is slightly better or slightly worse, it's not going to be that good of a tennis match.
Speaker: a Good comparison. I think also, yes, Magnus. The weird thing about comparing them is it was also, i mean, you play, usually you play a turn-based game for other reasons. It is more of a relaxing thing to do. Yeah.
Speaker: you you you get these weird effects of having a turn-based game. Rarely in an RTS game do you have to do this this thing where it's just the end-of-round check. yeah Am I producing everything I should be producing? Where are all my units or little guys at?
Speaker: ah Did I forget to click the button I have to click before I end my turn? I mean...
Speaker: It is a ah lot more, at least it's detail-oriented, it's just you're sitting around on your own and just checking up, okay, can I click the end turn button? ye And I get why we moved away from that because, i mean, we started out historically with kind of like every strategy game being a turn-based game by necessity.
Speaker: It was one of the board games that are by necessity turn-based and then into computer games that were, know, partly by culture, partly by necessity turn-based.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: ah And when you say that, I realize there is at least one famous competitive turn-based game, and it's chess. Yeah. yeah I've been watching a lot of chess streams. Are you sure you don't just want to retract the thing about competing in turn-based games because someone's going to slap you over that? It's like when you said, preempted it the very games have to have a military aspect, and then immediately had to recant it.
Speaker: yeah i'm I'm clearly the idiot of this pod. No, I just think you summarized in a clear way what we said about 10 minutes ago. Hi, all kids. Welcome to Grandpa's Discussing Games.
Speaker: Eldren, do you remember when people used to play competitive chess on TV? Those were the days. Kasparov, who was the greatest? Not bad. um We're going to move on and talk a little bit about the differences and disadvantages and advantages of both styles. But before we do that, so listeners to this podcast may have noticed that we have sort of a preference for any kind of game made by the Studio Paradox.
Speaker: And it's because we are Swedes and we are partial as hell. But... In general, Paradox mainly makes what we would call grand strategy games, and they are not that easy to fit into the RTS or turn-based scale, right? So just have to give a short rundown, essentially what an RTS is, is a real-time strategy.
Speaker: Everything happens continuously. You don't pause. You just do things as they happen. It's like in real life. It's the shooter of strategy games. And turn-based is essentially you have one turn to set everything up.
Speaker: Then you click the end turn button and then the next person goes and have their turn. It's sort of like the playing a board game with your friends version of it. And then you have the paradox games where you have game speed up and down. You can you are supposed to pause occasionally, but it also runs real-time.
Speaker: And it's on such a massive scale that it's sort of hard to talk about it as an RTS or a turn-based game. So what do we make of that? Why why is so is Paradox different? Is Grand Strategy different?
Speaker: ah um Is turn-based and RTS, are they not like ah the entire picture? Well, at least for me, I ah basically you don't want to talk about Paradox at all this episode ah because they make grand strategy games that i i'm sure I'm sure I'm wrong about this. But for me, that's neither a a classic RTS. It's definitely not a turn-based game,
Speaker: i e not the subject of this episode. Yeah. if you're free to disagree with me, but ah when when I talk about, I mean, typical RTS games, I don't think about Paradox games. I don't think about that kind of grand strategy game.
Speaker: It's also, i think you described it before we went on air on the US as a possible RTS game, which might be a good ah a good description. I mean,
Speaker: and they it's very often at least except for hearts of iron four uh often i mean single player absolutely dominates this game people play this they pause it they basically treat it like a turn-based game where you can decide when when kind of when the time sometimes text boxes are just so massive that you have to pause it in order to be able to realize what you're even dealing with yeah yeah I tend to agree. I don't want to linger with Paradox. For for me, Paradox and especially their grand-star games and Rufa Universalis. When that came out in
Speaker: 2000, I think, or maybe 1999, I think it's 2000. That kind of diverged from the turn-based RTS thing to form its own thing out here, which is Grand Strategy, which is if if I had to choose and bring something to a deserted island, would probably be bring a Grand Strategy game and then...
Speaker: yeah yeah and then use it as a possible ah grand strategy turn-based RKS game over here, because I can put a lot of hours in there.
Speaker: and but But that's something different, and we've talked about Paradox before. Just in this episode, I think that for all the listeners and for our own sanity, we're going to leave it in another lane, another road.
Speaker: We can wave at it as we pass by, and now we've done that. Excellent. So let's move on to... I think we're going to go actually do a sort of the pit stop and just talk a little bit about like what are what are sort of good examples of like pure RTS and pure turn-based games, just so we have something to go on ah for comparison. Also for our listeners who are not that accustomed to throwing around RTS and turn-based as definitions.
Speaker: So what what is like the purest turn-based game? Purest turn-based game? civil Civilization games? Probably. When I think turn-based, I think Civilization.
Speaker: ah That's probably my go-to. Yeah, Civ and Heroes of Might and Magic. yeah and Yeah, and also I think the...
Speaker: the
Speaker: Some would argue, that your older players would probably argue, the the first XCOM games are are also up there as turn-based games.
Speaker: They also exemplify where um turn-based strategy games sort of also move and the sort of borderlines into tactics games a bit.
Speaker: Yeah. Like commandos and stuff like that. Yeah. but But I think for a lot of people listening to this podcast, when we say turn-based, the first thing that pops up is Sid Meier's serialization.
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. And we mentioned a bunch of RTS games that are completely, I mean, in the lane for that. I mean, you mentioned the Command & Conquer series, right? We mentioned StarCraft, ah so and so forth. think I think basically everyone knows what an RTS game is.
Speaker: And...
Speaker: This is annoying thing for kind of the breed of player that we are that are, or at least me and you, that are heavily invested in grand strategy games. When you talk to a guy at a party or one of your girlfriend's friends, yeah, you play computer games as well. What do you play? It was like strategy games.
Speaker: And my mind goes to grand strategy. And then someone said, yeah, yeah, i love strategy games. i Yeah, I was really good at StarCraft. And were like, yeah, yeah. Yeah. We're not the same. When I was younger, I used to mock StarCraft player and call them like a scaled up hack and slash game. Like it's essentially Diablo with extra units.
Speaker: Yeah, but it's not far from it, but I mean, we we have to give that to to Blizzard and also to Westworld Studios. I mean, Dune, that kind of started the RTS trend. We have Warcraft. ah Also, nothing not to forget Age of Empires series, which is also a great RTS series.
Speaker: but But I think here, here it might be Age, but when someone says RTS for me, It kind of depends on the mood I'm in and I think about different games. But when someone says turn-based strategy, I directly go for ah Civilization.
Speaker: but Yeah. Yeah. it It is the grand example. It is the grand example. Sid Meier has been in the room for a long time. I want to toss in one game is' sort of in between as well and that's actually Total War.
Speaker: Yeah, well, I hope the game is turn-based and the battles are real-time. Yep, and they are. and Thank you for it. I saved that for later, but ah thank you. yeah and No, I completely agree with you. And that's probably one of the reasons why I feel so compelled by the Total War series, but also from...
Speaker: Steel Division, Varno, and the old classical game Close Combat, where you use a strategic overlay map to then go into the RTS battles, which I think... It's a clever way of... When you don't really know, are we doing an RTS game, how...
Speaker: How can we make this work? Or are we doing a strategy game? How can make this work? Why not take the best of both worlds and try to mash them together? and And some games, they they really hit the mark with this. Total War series, for example, the the close combat series, they hit it out of the park. Steel Division also.
Speaker: But then again, there are some games that try to do this, but really doesn't get it right, if you get what I mean, or and try to yeah try to get in elements that feels out of place or outdated or doesn't match the spirit of ah the game.
Speaker: Yeah, think there is a risk whenever you... First of all, I think yeah Total war games, they they do it incredibly well. The way they mix turn-based elements and real-time elements is really good.
Speaker: But there is also, I believe, a recurring risk when you try to do this. And it is that the vibe or the feel of the game gets sort of... um Well, it's it gets ah sort of yanked from intense to slow to intense to slow.
Speaker: ah Meaning that if you if you actually are in for the clicking everything, going fast, RTS experience, and all of a sudden the game just pauses you. Because now you need to make decisions. Or the other way around, you're sitting there, you're making your plans, everything is so turning out well, you're spending time thinking about your strategy, and then all of a sudden, yeah, fight the battle.
Speaker: ah Yeah, I think Magnus has something to say here, so I'm going to wait for my input here. No, but it's just going to say, i don't agree that... all these series kind of knock it out of the park. I mean, Steel Vision knocks it out park when it comes to kind of like the tactical combat, the tactical strategy.
Speaker: The strategic element of it is crap because, I mean, and that's why you mix it. And I kind of like the mix between turn-based and and RTS ah conceptually. ah I also like the Total War series, but...
Speaker: I mean, there there is a problem that you kind of invest very heavily into. into that's That's what Steel Division did. I mean, they invested very heavily into at the tactic and the tactical scene and kind of like the tactical battlefield. And that, I think, probably the game that's done that part best, especially for a historical nerd.
Speaker: Yeah. the strategical and operational element of it is, to be honest, it's more of an afterthought. ah And you can really tell that I were like, yeah, we don't need to do this perfectly. We don't even need to do it well.
Speaker: ah I think when we talked about geography in that episode, which we ah already released, I really... I complained a lot about the strategic element in Steel Division and it's same with Warno and the Wargame series.
Speaker: It is hard to marry them together sometimes. But that speaks to the advantages and disadvantages of an RTS versus a turn-based game. If you compare it to, I mean, compare it the Civilization series where, yeah, I mean, the strategy and the long-time strategy is really fun.
Speaker: Combat in Civilization has never i mean it it it's it's some of the games it's just farcical it's hard to keep track of you it's hard to keep track of how good your units are how will they stack up against others you might send them out and before they they turn up at your enemy cities you had a technological shift and all of a sudden you're attacking a city with a ballista when they you know invented gunpowder uh but you still win You might still win, which is which is weird.
Speaker: Which is weird. Yes. But, yeah, I mean, it's so clear that, I mean, the Sid Meier's games, the whole point is building your city, building your civilization, and combat is just like, yeah, it's it's one part of it, but it we don't need to model combat in any way realistically or even...
Speaker: all of the time well. ah So I think that that speaks a lot to it, but it is hard. yeah It's hard to marry these things together. And I'd like to come back towards the end of the episode and talk a bit about kind of shooters going strategical because I like it, but it gets weird sometimes.
Speaker: But i'll roll I'll circle back to that. yeah Yeah, please do. I mean, i somewhat agree with you, but I still think for what they are being a mesh between turn-based games strategy games, then they knock them out apart. Had Steel Division been a turn-based strategy game with that map overlay,
Speaker: I wouldn't have even touched it. Had it been ah ah ah RTS game, yeah, i would probably have loved it. Had Total War, the series, just been an RTS game or the tactical battles game, I would have grown bored with it in two hours, something like that.
Speaker: And that is something I want to go back to with at least the Total War series. And... all of those here is a risk when you've ended your turn in ah in the kind of turn-based RTS games like Total War, Like and would like that.
Speaker: You can get a turn where you have, oh, now I have to fight seven different battles in the same kind of mapping area. Each battle will take between 30 minutes and an hour.
Speaker: Okay, I guess I'm doing this. You fight one battle, you win it. Next battle, okay, I win that too. Third battle, oh, we don't have enough maps. So it's the same map. You have the first battle, but different units in it. And it gets kind of repetitive after a moment.
Speaker: and So thank God for the a quick resolution button. Yeah, the auto-resolve. I think we talk a lot or we have been talking a lot recently about which games or what part of games are realistic. And I think it's kind of fun that reality is sort of turn-based plus RTS.
Speaker: Like the reality of war is long stretches of planning time and then very short, decisive actions. ah It has been historically, and it is to a large extent even today.
Speaker: so to some extent, this is actually realistic that you can have days that they come with the command staff just planning, and then a battle goes down and it's three hours long, and then everything has changed.
Speaker: So I just think it's kind of fun that the mix is actually kind of more realistic than its than its part. I'm just so happy you didn't go into a military career. Yeah.
Speaker: Because, yeah, there is such a thing and as as an ODA loop and the enemy would be permanently inside yours. Yep. But I think you're actually grasping at something here or at least touching at it.
Speaker: In essential, in history, war is boring. War is logistics and planning that then goes down to now we have it or in older times, now we have a big battle.
Speaker: ah Let's kill each other. Let's see what happens after that and kind of evolve it out. So you're touching at something there that's kind of true. but But then again, do we always want our games to be totally realistic?
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: um and oh that's yeah I know that's me. like like I think about it a lot when we talk because a lot times we just point out like, oh, hey this is not realistic. This is not how forest works. This is not how geography works. This is not how money works.
Speaker: And most of the times I would like games to be slightly more realistic because I love complexity. But I also remember that yeah reality is not that fun.
Speaker: No, and and sure. i I know you, Magnus, you want your realism in that and it kind of shows and in the games we tend to like and we tend to play.
Speaker: and
Speaker: But... It's fun with a dragon. It's fun with space marines. Orcs are cool. Red makes it go faster. i mean, sometimes you just want to immerse yourself in. No, this is probably not how that should not work.
Speaker: Well, that shouldn't exist. But it's really fun. I mean, that that's in some sense, a special disbelief. Orcs are fun because, you know, everyone they face have to somehow, you know, at least try to, and and we're talking about Warhammer orcs specifically here, I think.
Speaker: The fun thing is that everyone else has to kind of like at least pretend they're following, you know, the laws of physics or the rules and the laws of the universe and the orcs just ignore it.
Speaker: If you believe hard enough, it will work. And that's fun. No, but but again, you drop if you drop, I mean, this whole thing, because now you got me started. But if you don't want it realistic in some sense, I mean, if you drop that, we're into the brain rot games that, I mean, kids are playing. night Yeah, we're into some kind of online shooter that where people just jump around and spray lasers on top of each other.
Speaker: was like, it's not that fun. Is it? Nope. No, it's theyre off the age of like 14. Is it that fun? I mean, that is also the age when you start to get too old for them just from reaction time. Right.
Speaker: I realized this, so this is a sidetrack, but when I first saw one so so will someone play Fortnite, I played a lot of shooters, especially Counter-Strike.
Speaker: i think I used to be kind of good at it. And then I watched a young person, kid, play Fortnite, and it was just... I have no idea how they managed to flick around like that. I have no idea how they managed to keep their attention everything like that.
Speaker: It was scary. Yeah, but then you boot up but your n sixty four put on Goldeneye and put that young man in his place. Yeah. No, but I get you're... I can beat him at managing incredibly unintuitive controls. yeah Exactly. ah But I get what you're getting at, Magnus, and I won't prolong this or get it going ah anymore. But I mean, one one of the biggest, if we're just talking games or realism in games...
Speaker: One of the biggest flaws that people tend to bring up when it comes to Star Wars games, how can you hear sounds in space? Well, because a space battle is quite boring if you don't hear the sound effects.
Speaker: Is it realistic? Nah, not what we know about physics and of today. but But I get what you're coming at. Yeah, I do. And...
Speaker: I have to retract my steps and say that, no, tend after your your your little rant, yeah, okay, I see what you're saying and I tend to agree with you.
Speaker: You agree too much on this podcast, Duval. Oh, we haven't gotten into Warhammer 40k or Turtle War, where you both are extremely, extremely wrong. yeah you should You should be more like me and just have all the weird, unthought-through, spontaneous opinions.
Speaker: Yeah, but i'm taking I'm taking the role as the Elder. My reaction time isn't that quick, so I can't think out anything new. I just agree and say, okay, let's move on. So, speaking of, ah well, speaking of nothing at all, let's transition.
Speaker: So, we have in our script notes put the the label of advantages and disadvantages via the style. And I want to do this sort of systematically. So, like, in your mind, what are first the advantages of RTS games?
Speaker: We're going to go through that. Then we're going through sort of the advantages of turn-based games. And then we're going to talk about the disadvantages of them. And then we can do a sort of a comparison on the end if we have the time.
Speaker: But let's go. Advantages, RTS. What is the nice thing? Why would you want to go for an RTS rather than anything else? but what yeah you yeah they good Yeah, the pace and also I think the to together it with the pace, the feeling of direct control.
Speaker: and I think that's the two main, at least for me, that would be the two main things. Yeah, and it also mimics. I mean, I talked about it being better at
Speaker: it's It's better for our kind of creating the tactical level of combat. And often that's what RTSs are. And it's perfect for that. it's it's It is boring trying to do tactical combat in other strategy games but RTSs.
Speaker: And I think it's super fun to be able to i mean control individual units once again, steal the vision. I mean, I can see that, okay, mike my anti-tank gun is lined up and one, two, three seconds is going to fire on the Panther and panther tank coming around the corner.
Speaker: um I mean, you you can't get that in another style of game and that's that's the fun thing about it. And then you have the nerve, oh, shit, my my round bounced off the Panzer's front armor. Yeah.
Speaker: i miss sir fire Fire again. Fire again. Fire again. Load. load quicker Load quicker. Load quicker. Please don't turn. Please don't turn. i mean yeah That intensity you will never get in a comparative strategy game.
Speaker: Yes. I have one one advantage but i which I think a little about a bunch, and it is timing. Like, this is... and It's actually going to boil down to disadvantage of turn-based games as well later on, but so let's develop it in the positive way first. So...
Speaker: In RTS, timing is in many ways everything, and you can execute plans with timing. You can have your armies lined up in different places of the map, and your ability to move them in synchronicity and your ability to trick the opponent and sort of move in with something else, everything matters in real time.
Speaker: And just being good at timing things is an entire dimension which most other strategy games don't really have. um you can't really, like, your ability to think in the terms of time doesn't matter that much if you have infinite time to sit around and plan.
Speaker: But when you have to time everything, it sort of starts to matter. Your ability to figure out how fast can I move through this terrain? Can I get these two units from these two angles to the same place at the same time? Or are they just going to be ground out one by one?
Speaker: Things like that starts to matter all of sudden. and I love that about RTS. I think that's why I love RTS games more than any kind of other other kind of strategy game, actually. ah yeah Yeah, I get that. yeah But yeah the timing and the direct control and the pacing, i think I think all those three kind of boils down to the to the same extent that why we like RTS games.
Speaker: and
Speaker: Yep. So, what are the advantages of turn-based games then?
Speaker: I'm going to go first. Yeah, sure. One of the best advantages of GoogleJap, which I love about them, which is so why I still keep coming back to turn-based games, is planning. i get to I get to sit around and think.
Speaker: I can sit around and think for like half an hour before I lay out my plan and give orders to my units and do things. And it is it is beautiful. like And this is sort of a disadvantage of RTSs as well. When when I play a lot of RTSs, it boils down to my reflexes. I don't have a plan. I've just learned the game to such an extent that I just do a plan without actually thinking of it.
Speaker: Whilst in a turn-based game, I can actually sit down and just calculate, write down what I want to do, figure out the best there sort of major strategy.
Speaker: And and that this is something I really like. Yeah, I agree with you. That's one of the points that I was actually going to highlight. But also another point that I like to highlight is that your decision weighs so much more heavily and in the long run than it does in an RTS.
Speaker: If you take the wrong decision halfway through the map or you send one of your units, one of your elite units... just out to scout and then it gets cornered, there's no way as an RTS to replace that unit because you can usually build a new one or something like that.
Speaker: But for the duration of that game that can be quite long, that is lost and your handling of the tactical situation has more long-term implications if you do it wrong. But when you execute it and everything works, it's an immense feeling of satisfaction, at least for me.
Speaker: I was going to say scaling, and which is something that RTS struggle with, I find. I mean, take Sev again, because it's top of mind right now, but you scale from like, yeah, you're one settler and one worker, and you can scale that up to, I mean, to model a civilization throughout the course of its its existence.
Speaker: Mm-hmm. has some problems but rts is i mean handling that kind of scale that kind of modeling and passage of time rts usually struggle a lot more with that uh and think that that's also something i mean rtss are good at modeling tactics but i usually they're also constrained to tactics because it's so hard to model something else than mean tactically moving moving units around um sort I think that's what i mean one of the reasons why you don't see kind of like the the civilization or a city building RTSs that were very common when we were with kids.
Speaker: i mean one One thing is we can do cooler games and we can do ah different stuff in games. so um But scaling is definitely an advantage of turban-based games.
Speaker: Yeah, I just want to add one quick yeah positive thing for turn-based games here. yeah I also think they are better suited for casual gaming. and yeah They are really good casual gaming games. I mean, i for one, I play a lot of Warhammer Armageddon, which is a turn-based game.
Speaker: and I go in, I play played it intensively for for a couple of days, and then I let live for... half a year or a year, something like that, and then I can go back in it and it hasn't changed. it is You can just pick it up and stop running with it again.
Speaker: That's good. Let's then move on to the disadvantages. and we go We start with turn-based this time around. What are the disadvantages for turn-based strategy game? ah think that some people can find it slow.
Speaker: Hmm. slow and in some ways repetitive ah in the long and the longer games that if for Civilization, for example, if you really like, well, say France, you tend to go the way that, oh, I'm going writing first because if if I get the and Library of Alexandria, I get this and then I get that. It tends to be a repetitive meta clicking for some, I think, if you're not open to to trying new civilizations or new things to do.
Speaker: But the slowness, I think, can put a lot of people off. Just the i mean the housekeeping of a turn-based game.
Speaker: Whether it's i mean if you're playing a board game with your friends, or I mentioned this before, or if you're playing a computer game. ah Just have I done everything I need to do when I finish my turn? What do I need to start my turn with? What I need to end my turn with?
Speaker: ah I mean, that that's not a fun aspect of turn-based games. It's so stressful. it's stressful and I don't know if it's you know some slight OCD on my part, but ah yeah, that's annoying.
Speaker: It is. Oh, now I actually have three disadvantages, but two of them are just comments on what you said. It feels very much like a game. It Disbelief when you kind of go into it's like, yeah, I have rebuilt the Byzantine Empire.
Speaker: And I think that's a bit hard to get in turn-based games. Yeah. Yes. So I think there there are three things I want to put there. Two of them are just things that you guys have been talking about as well, but I want to develop a little bit. So the first one is the the slowness.
Speaker: And the slowness of turn-based games, unfortunately, makes multiplayer very hard. Mm-hmm. Like, there is a point, like when I was playing with my ex, it was sort of nice because when she was taking her turn, I could talk about stuff. where She would sort of respond, sort of listen, so because she was also playing a game at the same time. But and we could have conversations. We could slow down. There was no stress.
Speaker: It was ah sort of a good way to spend time together. But if you do it for the game, then you just sit around and wait a lot. And that can be sort of annoying, especially if you have an opponent who wants to win and thus wants to sit around and plan even harder.
Speaker: You can sit around and wait for a really long time. That also brings up another disadvantage or a comment on what Magnus said that there is also the the part of like in ah in an RTS you manage everything that needs to be managed when it happens.
Speaker: In a turn-based game you have to do everything each turn because if there is some part of your of the gameplay that you don't engage in in one turn, you just lost one turn of that.
Speaker: And you're just one turn of research behind or something like that, one turn of movement further away from where you need to be. as So it's a sort of all or nothing, which forces you to do even the things you don't want to do. And for me, that just means that I play stupid.
Speaker: I tend to click through all of the decisions I'm not interested in very quickly and just get it over with, rather than plan out everything. I have seen a few streamers online who are actually sort of more expert on turn-based games, especially the Total War games.
Speaker: I marvel at them because they spend so much time thinking about and planning things, which I just ignore, which I just want to get to the next turn to keep going with the thing I was interested in.
Speaker: Finally, the third thing, my unique disadvantage for a turn-based game, it's something you see a lot in um in the bigger, closer to grand scale ah games and in ah Total War games. And it is the fact that your opponent, i if it's a player or if it's an AI, and you, well, you get sort of out of sync with each other. So, for example, say you you are defending a, let's do go with a total war example from Medieval.
Speaker: You are defending, like, the city of Venice, and you have an army in Venice, and then move one army outside of Venice to sort of prevent enemy armies from, well, entering.
Speaker: And then you end turn. And then it's the enemy's turn. And they just walk like a circle around you all the way to enemies. Because during the entire time they were having their turn, well, you're just camped there. You can't do anything. And I think that is a problem in a lot of turn-based games that Heroes of Magic has that a lot.
Speaker: like essentially as out of bad luck. they yeah When you take turns, you just walk asynchronously, whereas in a turn but a in an RTS game, you would see them trying to walk past you so you can intercept them.
Speaker: And this is something that annoys me a lot because it means I have to spend much more time moving back and forth just being really annoyed that the AI keeps running past me ah
Speaker: yeah yeah so but i was so that was that was turn-based the disadvantages of real-time strategy then apart from the fact that i apparently can't drink too much coffee while i play them But you won mentioned one of the big big things that are, i mean, these are popular, or a lot of popular multiplayer strategy games are RTS. And I mean, the threshold as a beginner, I feel, is often quite high.
Speaker: um are Or the alternative. if she A nice description is the the learning curve is steep. yeah And we're going to get your ass handed to you ah by some guy online that just has more hours to play or has more hours in the game.
Speaker: and The problems of
Speaker: scale we mentioned uh and i think that that is a problem is if if if the game gets too complex it's just too much to handle uh which is also something you've talked about in other episodes on the us that you filled out they're kind of dumbing down rtss um and i think that's a genuine not problem but a constraint of it the type of game that you can't have too much complexity within an rts game
Speaker: No, you took my disadvantage. But but yes, I agree. Yeah, it comes to that. And also reaction and and quickness, I think can be a disadvantage if you want to play against people you don't know.
Speaker: But that goes into the learning curve and the age problem. yeah so But I think that the thing you brought up, Magnus, that I brought up beforehand, that is my biggest disadvantage with an RTS as of now.
Speaker: And that would probably be my top disadvantage for an RTS. Yeah, and I'm a sort of with you, ah oh maybe with a slight twist. I think the bad thing about RTSs is that they don't give you time to plan.
Speaker: So you have to react, you have to do things all the time. And it also means that you essentially, to be good at the game, you have to know it. ah again It's not enough to just be a good strategy game player.
Speaker: Like, for example, different unit types in battle often counter each other. You just need to know in the back of your head which unit counters which and just sort of reflexively ah react in the right way. Because the information is there. You could click an enemy unit and read through it and to figure out what it's good and bad against.
Speaker: But you don't have the time to do that. No. and Exactly. And I think in some of the and the most well-known RTS games, you have kind of this
Speaker: This faction counters this faction, but that faction counters this faction that counters the first faction. It's kind of a little wheel with what are we good or bad against, which in my mind can also be quite repetitive. But yeah, the the unit countering different units...
Speaker: That's good. I mean, really good. I wish I would have had the time to pause the game and look at that as I can do in ah grand strategy game or in a turn-based game.
Speaker: So we have a lot of sort of dangling topics. I think we're going to have to return a bit to these these topics again, maybe do a specific turn-based, a specific RTS episode or sometime in the future.
Speaker: But Magnus dangled a topic which I just can't abandon. It's ah shooters going strategical. Yeah, and i yeah I think this is an interesting... I mean, because...
Speaker: I mean, the game scene is evolving all the time. and But I think that this is and it's something that I find interesting that we've seen games over the last couple of years that are the last few years that are car and marketed or really built as, okay, this is a shooter, ah but we lean heavily into the strategic side of things, and it really becomes more of a tactical game, or kind of like a mix between a shooter and an RTS game.
Speaker: Hell It Loose is a perfect example of this, where it's, I mean, you look at it once, and you're okay, so it's another World War II shooter, ah but i the game doesn't even count, mc okay, how many players have you killed?
Speaker: Which I think is an interesting thing. is that the The point of the game is not to kill the enemy. The point of the game is working as a squad, and working as a team, capturing objectives. And I find that both, I mean, i I like it personally, but I find it interesting that there seems to be kind of like a niche for something that's in between ah more straightforward shooter game where like, yeah,
Speaker: headshot 360 no scope and something that's more of an RDS. It's not an RDS, it's still a shooter. But the thing is, and it it also means that a different kind of player can kind of enjoy the game, even if you're not the best at a shooter game.
Speaker: You can still kind of really, you can... you can really contribute to the team by, yeah, I'll be the co-driver on your tank or I'll spot for your artillery cannon.
Speaker: Of course, I'll be a support machine gunner. I will never see, ah barely see the enemy, but I will spend like 20 minutes laying down suppressive fire on a specific point of the map.
Speaker: And I think of that, I find it interesting that, kind of like the market is trying to fill that niche in between shooters and strategy games. so It also becomes a more intelligent shooter.
Speaker: And it's still cool when you kind of like go through a corner and manage to ah kill three enemies. um There was... I've forgotten the name, but i think you've played it as well. You want a really interesting...
Speaker: War of Rights, think it was called. Really interesting game. Set in the American Civil War. Yeah, right. It's the one where the servers got swarmed off sort of American racists in the end, right?
Speaker: Yeah. Sadly, that kind of killed the game for me. I was getting there. Really interesting game. word Okay, so the point of this, yeah, you have you have a musket. your musket is not going to be accurate.
Speaker: But if you manage to kind of like work together with the rest of your squad, listen to your officers, you have actually have players playing kind of like an officer, which means, okay, I have a saber. I can do next to nothing with the saber, but I do have a function, okay. Okay, man, form line here, ah fall back.
Speaker: like And if you form a line, if you stay within the squad, ah you will take less damage. You will deal more damage. ah So the game is kind of set up to for players to work together. It and it It is ah a tactical game or a real-time strategy game as well as kind of like i it's it sits somewhere in between. I think that that's interesting.
Speaker: Super sad that it became unplayable ah because, yeah, shocker. It turns out that the people who wanted to play as the South in the American Civil War had some kind of, yeah yeah, had some extreme views on things like you racial equality, ah stuff like that.
Speaker: Who knew? Who knew? Who would have funk? And we're sort of approaching the one hour mark. So do you want to bring into this conversation any other topics or should we round off?
Speaker: No, I think we'll revisit turn-based and RTS games, but in separate episodes, because I think we have a lot to talk about and dissect here. But for this episode, I feel that I've gotten out everything I want to say.
Speaker: Me too. In that case, thank you all for listening, and have a great whatever time of the day you are listening to this episode. Goodbye. Goodbye.
