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[Frumple]

It's not terrible, but it's also worse than supcom 1, by and large, if you want a tl;dr that isn't fueled by fan rage. You'd probably be better off just getting 1 (or OG total annihilation or that other one I'm forgetting (pa?), I guess) if you want that supcom experience.

[Dostoevsky]

Based on my old memory, Supreme Commander 2 steps away from what made Total Annihilation and Supreme Commander 1 so special - the scale. SupCom2 felt rather more generic in a lot of ways.

(But that's just old memories from giving SupCom2 a whirl when it first came out.)

[nenjin]

I'd never played any of the games but upon firing up SupCom 2, it looks bland and boring. It wasn't really for me to begin with, the "thousands of units moving around doing stuff" was never really a draw for me.

And then I went and back Planetary Annihilation on Kickstarter and surprise, I wasn't that amazed by it either. Still better than SupCom 2 though.

[Shooer]

Supcom 2 looked, felt, and played like a bad generic RTS from the 90s.  One of those warcraft or starcraft clones.  It felt like that more than it was like Supcom 1 or TA.

Going from large maps, large fights, large bases to large units on small maps with small bases just wasn't a step up.

[Dostoevsky]

I'd never played any of the games but upon firing up SupCom 2, it looks bland and boring. It wasn't really for me to begin with, the "thousands of units moving around doing stuff" was never really a draw for me.

I'll be honest, the massive number of units wasn't what I loved about Total Annihilation - it was the proto-physics (shots were actual things that could be dodged), the way aircraft worked, and, most of all, big honkin' artillery. TA was way ahead of its time in a lot of ways, but those advancements are maybe more for historical posterity than present enjoyment. TA also happens to be a wonderful game for my turtling instincts.

(Ship combat was also ahead of its time, if not as big a deal as actual aircraft attack runs.)

I played TA a heck of a lot more than SupCom, at any rate. Had an amazing modding scene for its day... I wonder how many of those mod-units have been preserved on the internet?

[Shooer]

I played TA a heck of a lot more than SupCom, at any rate. Had an amazing modding scene for its day... I wonder how many of those mod-units have been preserved on the internet?

Most if not all.  Also more cause people are still making them.

I loved TA and Supcom for the scale, the feel and the unlimited resources allowing an always growing and escalating battle.

[Dostoevsky]

I played TA a heck of a lot more than SupCom, at any rate. Had an amazing modding scene for its day... I wonder how many of those mod-units have been preserved on the internet?

Most if not all.  Also more cause people are still making them.

Neat.

I loved TA and Supcom for the scale, the feel and the unlimited resources allowing an always growing and escalating battle.

Heck, it was the first with unlimited resources as well, wasn't it? Such a nice change of pace from the C&C/Warcraft economy systems...

Anyways, back on topic... Wizardry 8 is on sale for 2 bucks on GOG for those who don't have it yet. Probably-not-coincidentally a prominent Youtube-gamer freshly reviewed it.

[Frumple]

Not actually sure on the infinite resource thing. There was a lot of experimentation back in then, just like there is now, and it's possible someone or another had done a RTS with infinite resources of some sort or another prior to TA. Fairly sure of someone or another did, thinking on it a bit, though memory of exact ones escapes me at the moment and it might not have been like TA's system. You'd be looking for something prior to '97.

[dragdeler]

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[Kagus]

My only real issue with Evil Genius was that the "front" you put up never worked. Enemy agents would come in, immediately zero in on the route to your base and just start trashing shit left and right. Traps, decoys, all that nonsense was a waste of time. It was far better to have an empty parlor up front, a long corridor for them wander down, then you just dog pile them with a big trap room. I got so sick of having to constantly rebuild everything they trashed I eventually gave up.

Something I did that did delay the agents a lot was building hotels with a ton of 1x1 rooms with doors on all sides. They'd waste a lot of time shooting the doors. But yeah that was tedious to replace. Putting big blocks of machine gun nests outside ended up being less hassle, backed with security cameras so that guards would swarm into the location. Deal with it like an RTS defense situation, and drop the pretense.

Also, building your barracks or troops training areas in the entrances can help too. Same thing as works well in Dungeon Keeper. It's faster to replace minions than equipment.

Yeah, it's a cute game with some great concepts, buuut... Having dudes break your fronting ability only for you to counter-break them with perpetual wind rooms that generated more revenue than your criminal schemes could hope to achieve was... Not exactly what I imagine was the intended gameplay experience.

[Aoi]

This implies simcity is good.

I hope this is a dig at more recent entries in the series and not, say, SimCity 4. That game has plenty of nostalgia value for me, and surprisingly enough it is still good fun. Plus, now I have mods that can be jammed into it with only a moderate amount of fuss! I'm still kinda hopeless at balancing a working goddamn budget when I play, though. Nuclear plants and army bases for everyone! Hooray!   

Isn't Sim City 4 the second latest entry, before that weird one that where you were building districts, not entire cities, and launched with always-online (and, more problematically, always-broken servers...)?

Third-latest: there was SimCity Societies and SimCity (no number).  Societies was the lightweight game that was panned as being simplistic and easy.  SimCity was one you were thinking of with a storm of mandatory-online single-player, teeny tiny "cities", performance woes, and serious underlying flaws with the simulation.  Given that SimCity 4 is 17 years old, it's both impressive and kinda sad that it's still one of the foremost city-simulation games on the market.

With a very old mod it also still has one of the best traffic simulations.

Incidentally, SC4's available at Fanatical for 2$ (-90%) right now, if anybody wants it. Which appears to be a historical low.

[LordBaal]

Sim City 4 is pure gold and also the last entry on the series. THE LAST I SAY!

The mod that adds like a thousand intersections, access ramps and other mass transport stuff makes it even better (and ram hungry)

[BigD145]

Sim City 4 is pure gold and also the last entry on the series. THE LAST I SAY!

The mod that adds like a thousand intersections, access ramps and other mass transport stuff makes it even better (and ram hungry)

NAM is wonderful and fixes a lot of issues. https://community.simtropolis.com/forums/topic/73555-simcity-4-and-the-nam-how-to-best-enjoy-this-city-building-masterpiece-today/

[Reelya]

Not actually sure on the infinite resource thing. There was a lot of experimentation back in then, just like there is now, and it's possible someone or another had done a RTS with infinite resources of some sort or another prior to TA. Fairly sure of someone or another did, thinking on it a bit, though memory of exact ones escapes me at the moment and it might not have been like TA's system. You'd be looking for something prior to '97.

It could also depend on widening the definition of RTS. There were RTS games before Dune II.

Nether Earth from 1987 is one example. You capture factories and build modular robots who have some limited AI and ability to give them orders. The factories generate resources over time, so they're unlimited. This one was probably the most advanced RTS I've seen from the 1980s: Isometric view, module unit design and ability for units to follow specific orders.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PEnq8L6IT0o

[Bralbaard]

There's also Mechanized Assault and Exploration from 1996, though strictly speaking it is simultaneous turn based, not true real time.
It had no upkeep for units, so you could build unlimited amounts of them, but it would take time to build them. Resources were infinite, in that your mines would never run out, an in time you would only build more and more mines.
I still consider this the best strategy game I've played. The way it deals with upgrades, and the importance of secondary units and supply lanes is near perfect. If the enemy had greatly superior forces you could still beat him by taking out his radar scanners, thereby blinding his long range units, or by destroying his ammo trucks, or his repair units.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/615250/MAX_Mechanized_Assault__Exploration/

Too bad MAX II was such an utter dissapointment, and it killed the series.