It is boring as hell

Sure, you're entitled to your opinion. But that doesn't make it a valid opinion when making a claim about broader market trends, given there's no real evidence to suggest that your opinion is more broadly held.

where you micro death blobs of identical units in a boring repetitive and tedious fashion

I don't think I have ever seen that happen in AoE4 or Age of Mythology. It can happen sometimes in AoE2, but I would not say it is the norm even there.

Perhaps because of the whole first half of my comment which you ignored. That even so-called RPS RTSes aren't a simple RPS simulator, or even particularly close to that, in practice.

Then you don’t know what you are talking about

Uhh, what? I'm not "talking about" anything except what others said. Everyone I know of who tried out the game swiftly lost interest. The hype died out quite quickly after a brief hype cycle two or three years ago. That's not my own opinion about anything to do with the game, because I was never particularly interested in it to start with, for reasons that have nothing to do with mechanics. It's based on observations of how people who were initially interested reacted to trying it out.

Look, I responded to your first comment in good faith. I thought it was the start of a potentially interesting conversation, and I engaged with it in that manner. But I'm sensing a rather unnecessary hostile tone in this comment that suggests you are not here for good faith discussion. I hope I'm wrong and that the rudeness was not intended. That it's just an artifact of how tone carries poorly online. Because I would be more than happy to continue the conversation further if so.

But second, even if you do simplify these games down to RPS, I don't think it's a bad thing to have that be the core of the game design. In fact, I would say just the opposite.

It is boring as hell, I just end up playing realistic war games because it feels unsatisfying and rote to play the same type of boring RTS over and over again where you micro death blobs of identical units in a boring repetitive and tedious fashion.

I'm not super familiar with BAR but most I've what I've heard about it makes me feel it fell flat as a game. I was never interested in it personally because of theme.

Then you don't know what you are talking about.

Beyond All Reason and Spring Engine games have been in development with an active playerbase for two decades.

Supreme Commander Forged Alliance Forever is another spiritual successor to Total Annihilation that is very good, and people still play Total Annihilation a ton itself too.

Planetary Annihilation is another TA inspired game.

I'm not super familiar with BAR but most I've what I've heard about it makes me feel it fell flat as a game. I was never interested in it personally because of theme.

Looking at the games I like, I don't think I agree that 'developers can't get out of the mindset of "rock paper scissors" strategy' is a valid critique. First, I don't think it's even entirely accurate. A game like Age of Empires 2 doesn't have a simple RPS system in reality; that's just a simplified explanation we use when first getting into it. In reality, spears/scouts/skirmishers form a pretty good RPS, but in large numbers ranged units end up outplaying cav with good micro. Then there's units like siege and the non-spear infantry units which don't fit neatly at all.

Age of Mythology superimposes a second triangle over the basic triangle, in the form of the hero/human/myth unit triangle.

And all these games have broader strategy triangles in the form of boom/turtle/rush. Or the eco/tech/military triangle. In AoE4, that latter tends to look like fast castle vs 2 TC vs feudal military units.

But second, even if you do simplify these games down to RPS, I don't think it's a bad thing to have that be the core of the game design. In fact, I would say just the opposite. The Age game that deviates the most from an RPS model is the least successful. Audiences, when talking about RTS games, will extol the RPS mechanics and the interactions and back-and-forth that emerge from it. Strategies like building mostly one unit, with a few of whatever counters the counter, or the benefits of scouting so you can concentrate on what counters you opponent's play, etc.

People talk about RPS in positive terms. It's commercially successful. The audience just leans towards something which can be mapped on to RPS.

It is because RTS developers can't get out of the mindset of "rock paper scissors" strategy and create more combined arms warfare games like Beyond All Reason.

It's mostly focused on the very casual audience, with campaign scenario design making up a huge chunk of the (honestly kinda excessive) runtime. But I found some of its thoughts on the design of the games themselves interesting.

My initial thought was that this looked like a new Stronghold competitor. Which would have been totally awesome, as someone recently re-interested in that franchise, thanks to the recent beta release of Stronghold 4. But unfortunately it seems like this game only has two of the three key aspects that makes SH what it is. There's castle building and combat, but no mention of any economy in either the article or the linked official video, let alone the sort of complex economy of the OG games.

I'll still be following this game with interest, but hopes are lower than the were at first.

I thought the video was about Savage 1 and 2, those let you fight as any of the units in the map

I'm amazed that that game is still being supported. Fantastic.

I love that this game is still going and improving.

Being able to drop out and rejoin is an awesome feature.

This is an appeal to biology from someone who cant even tell you if or why you are sentient.

Humans

I learned something today, thank you

Only a fool walks willingly into the ELIZA effect.

I think this video is missing the point of what it means for a game to be hard. Like, yeah, it's easy to win a round if you just play against someone who is worse than you. But some games require skills that are harder to learn, or require higher levels of those skills before you can engage with all of the game's complexity, so if your goal is not "beat this specific player" but is instead "master the game systems so that you can interact meaningfully with all of the game's depth" then obviously some games really are harder. Tic-tac-toe and Othello are both strategy games about placing pieces to control space on a grid, but you can learn to play tic-tac-toe optimally in less than five minutes, and even the best human players don't play Othello perfectly. It is not just about types of skills (although I would say that a game that requires you to practice more skills at once is harder), it's about how far ahead you need to plan, the number of possible decisions, etc.

In short, this video's thesis is that in multiplayer games, the "difficulty" is not determined by game mechanics, but by how strong your opponent is. As a result, changes that make the game "harder" are in fact just altering the types of skills that the game emphasises.

Games with more busy work (like manually queuing villagers, manually placing farms, etc.) give a greater advantage to players who can make more decisions, more quickly. Games which automate those give a greater advantage to players with greater strategic skill, who can make the right decisions.

Neither of those is necessarily the right decision, but it's something game developers need to be consciously aware of when designing strategy games, and which fans of the games should also be aware of before reacting to/criticising game design decisions.

For context, although I enjoy them because of nostalgia, I would not consider any of the pre-DE Age of Empires games to be "playable" in this sense, either. Little things like shift queuing, intuitive (read: grid-based) hotkeys, and queuing arbitrary combinations of techs & units.

Also relevant is the importance of modern matchmaking with a reasonably healthy scene.

I would argue Rise of Nations is rather playable (in context of modern UI/UX expectations), but maybe it's because I did play it a lot as a kid. And I believe it support modern resolutions, although maybe UI scale is an issue.

It took some searching, but I managed to find where to get unsigned versions of that "Prostagma" merch, if the price of the signed versions is too steep. It's here: https://iamboit.dashery.com

Unfortunately the feedback I heard from someone who played it recently was that

it's clunky af and very outdated, very sad

A shame. I never played this game, or the similar Rise of Nations, as a kid. But I always thought they were very intriguing. If either of them were to get a Definitive Edition similar to the Age of Empires/Mythology remakes that came out recently, I would absolutely jump on it. But this "gold edition" sounds like it's not even up to the level of the "HD" and "EE" editions of aoe2/aom that came out over a decade ago.

I personally don't see the reason to buy a game like Empire Earth not on GOG (or a hypothetical competitor that offers an independent installer without DRM).

Me and a good friend love to play this, we were quite shocked when we wanted to play yesterday and there was a new version. The new update sadly doesn't fully work on my desktop linux system although it does work on my steamdeck

I just bought this on steam. It's been on my wishlist for a while, but now that the single player is imminent I jumped in.

I dabbled a bit in this and let me assure you: this is a game for enthusiasts. My first kill felt like a real victory and I was exhausted, but in the good way.