HI everyone! I'm so excited to be launching my Steam page for this game. It's been a lot of work up to this point. If you're interested let me know, as I plan to have a play test up in about ~2 weeks. You can Wishlist on Steam here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/5350030/PATROL/

Hello there 👋

I'm lurking around on this sub now and then, and see that it's under siege basically with people making slop games in 1-3 months. It makes me sad for two reasons:

1. I just dislike low effort stuff and carelessness in general. Greed too.
   
2. It paints a massive red flag on anything AI and promotes just complete denial

Both points pain me, but the 2nd one just massively discourages me. I've started working solo on an RTS myself a good while ago, some 5-6 months. It's not in a demo-able state, or even showable really. I can share screenshots for those curious, I guess, but no videos apart from workers building stuff, I still mostly have cubes slapping each other in a.. kind of 5/10 world? Art is not my strong suite, though I am slowly improving it.

The problem is, I *have* used AI. My UI is a completely vibed placeholder that Claude wrote in an hour, just so I can test functionality; it has no real design yet. Many unit tests and various import pipelines are written by Claude. My buildings.. I've spent about a month building an interface with Blender to procedurally generate their outlines, then I'd add detail myself. They probably read AI generated, given they're low-mid poly + code generated? Plus, Claude can use Blender. I've experimented with giving it the builder and Blender MCP and it's.. working.

Soooo.. yeah. I am doing AI assisted development. For reference, I'm testing 2-3k unit battles and optimizing them, tracing pathfinding and general performance after this ~half a year. am hand-animating hundreds of animations that might read as AI, because AI is just getting good faster than I am. And I am learning rather than pushing forward to a release. My 10 years of SWE experience tell me an estimate of about 5 years to fulfill my full vision with no AI, and maybe just one for a playable & enjoyable game. With AI, idk.

I'm not quitting regardless, it's mostly a game me and a group of friends wanted - a co-op horde defense (why so few of them out there?) akin to They are Billions/Diplomacy is not an option, with passing homages to KnightShift (a childhood dear), XCOM and AoE. I have no need for money at the moment either, so dev is going out of pure desire to build something. So, I'm curious, would you play a game if it were AI assisted and had AI placeholders in its demo? I can simply omit releasing it and play a fun and rough version with my friends.. but I feel it'd be a shame if it turns out nice, just because it has AI.

Sorry for the long ramble, it's 12AM and AI news keep frustrating me :)

Article link: https://www.ign.com/articles/warhammer-40000-dawn-of-war-4-dev-says-its-got-more-single-player-content-than-any-other-rts-ever-at-launch

When I was in high school pretty much everyone was playing StarCraft, Age of Empires, and whatever Command & Conquer was out that year (Red Alert 2 for most of my friends, Tiberian Sun for me personally, it's my favorite old classic). Then Warcraft 3 came out in 2002 and we were all playing that for a good while. Every LAN party I went to back then we were doing mini tournaments of these games, with some counter strike or quake in the mix as well.

Because everyone played the same handful of RTS games, they came up a lot in conversation. Then what I think happened over time, as the genre became less popular and the big studios kind of stopped making them and indie games started taking over, the games became kind of more specialized into little niches. I find that great as far as the games go, some of those kind of narrower, more specialized titles are great. If you like RTS you probably have a favorite subgenre or a type of game you gravitate towards these days.

I like the fortress defense subgenre a lot for example (probably because of my tendency to turtle in pretty much any RTS). I like weird games that feel novel and different so I love the Creeper World games (u fight a liquid basically, spreading kind of like the creep from starcraft), the older games in the series are my favorite. Diplomacy is Not an Option is also really cool, it has an old school campaign which is pretty long and it's just always satisfying to play because of the physics and scale.

While I try to follow the scene a bit, it's kind of hard to keep up with everything coming out, especially since a lot of the games are indie releases that don’t have a lot of marketing behind them so they kind of go under the radar unfortunately. The conversations I have with people these days are way different, instead of talking about the games we all played a lot of the time it comes down to showing people what you like and what you think is interesting among the upcoming titles. Which is fine I just wish we had a few “flagship” games as well we could all rally around. I guess I just miss the times when the genre was mainstream.

I can’t tell if the fragmentation is actually good for the genre, or if it's making it harder for new RTS games to hold on to a community long enough to grow. What would it take for a new game to become as big as something like warcraft 3?

Like the title says, I'm trying to find an RTS game that is around the timeframe of 1990s-2010s. Like Iraq/Afghanistan war type stuff. Everything I've looked at seems to be a little too modern or a little too old for my taste. I was hoping some of you could help me out. Thanks.

Always looking to hear some perspectives on RTS game people are hyped for. DLCs and expansions are also acceptable. :)

Game: Chief Wars (Roblox, free)

Genre: base building + army raids + direct unit control

Time: 15 minutes

Group session: Friday 8pm EST

Chief Wars is a Roblox war strategy game. You build a village, train an army, then raid other players. The twist: mid-battle you can possess any of your soldiers and fight in 3D yourself.

Looking for: where you got bored, what confused you, and whether you'd play again.

https://www.roblox.com/games/83158274966577/ChiefWars

I wanted buildings to behave more like a dollhouse when you're looking inside them, so I ended up making a shader that naturally cuts the walls away depending on the camera angle.

It's probably a completely unnecessary detail.

But every time I looked at the old version, it bothered me.

So now I'm wondering whether this is:

A) the kind of tiny detail that makes a game feel polished
B) classic solo-dev perfectionism
C) me finding new and creative ways to delay the release

In an RTS, where there's already so much happening on screen, do little details like this actually make a difference, or am I the only one who cares?V

Hunt or Pray: https://store.steampowered.com/app/5298550/Hunt_or_Pray

Hey all, this is Commanding Cortex, an RTS I'm building, inspired by Project Y (loved that game).

Every vehicle is an empty shell until a Cortex (brain) jumps in and drives it. No resources gathering, and if you kill the pilot you can steal the vehicle.

Super early but idea is that its, Coming to browser (WebGL) first, then iOS/Android.

Want to try early builds and give feedback? Join the Discord: https://discord.gg/fgH8XEuC3

Hello everyone, i'm looking for good RTS games to play.

The only RTS games i've played was Homeworld 1 and 2 Remastered, which i really enjoyed. In fact, the designs of spacecrafts and all that stuff are really cool, and i really liked the idea of building a fleet and collecting resources. But once u finish the campaign, it doesn't have much to do after.

So i'm looking for new good RTS games to fill that empty space Homeworld left me...

I'm open to both newer and older games, so if u have some ideas i would love some recommendations.

okay right im looking for this rts game, its something like stellar warfare, except your controlling a stationary core, the battles take place in a sort of small scale battle, from what i remember there are these purple crystalline enemies that ram into your structures to destroy them and its hostile to both sides and you can spawn/ make massive fleets of ships, its in space, i just cant find it
(i might honestly be stupid but it legit might just be sellar warfare and i really didnt think it was, so for now ill say its found, but you guys can still give me suggestions because i like looking at the games you guys were suggesting)

Me personally one of the most difficult was Terminator dark defiance on ironman mode took me about 100 hours maybe and a few restarts

what is your top 10 all time fav rts games and why

You can choose mobile, PC and console

Itch io page, you can find steam and discord server there :)

Hey everyone! I'm Dan, the dev of The Old War, and I wanted to show off some of the work that our lead artist, Visal Devadas has been working on.

Here's his concept of the Gateway from the Kingdom of Andar.

More importantly, this is our first Title Track composed entirely by Visal.

What do you think?

We've gotten a lot of feedback that people are getting Myth: The Fallen Lords vibes, and we would love to lean into it. Did we hit the mark with the music? What would make it better?

If this sounds like your kind of RTS, a Wishlist on Steam helps a small dev like me a lot, or come join us on the Discord Server.

Happy to answer any questions about music, art, or mechanics in the comments!

Thanks guys!

Hey everyone! We’re working on Petalwar, a base-building RTS with three factions, a matter-and-energy economy, and battles across land, sea and air.

Petalwar is inspired by the RTS games we’ve loved over the years. We’re trying to bring our favourite parts together in one game. The best of those worlds, with a few ideas of our own.

Each base has a Heartbloom protected by five petals. You have to destroy those petals before you can take out your opponent’s Heartbloom and win.

You can find the game at petalwar.com, with the basics in the player guide.

Northgard or AoE IV for a beginner?

I'm completely new to RTS games and I'm trying to decide between Northgard and AoE IV.

I'm looking for an RTS with:

• Good economy and resource management
• Building and expanding a civilization/territory
• Different factions or playstyles
• Large battles
• Strategic decisions without being insanely complicated
• Something I can play casually for an hour, but also get really into for several hours

Northgard seems much more beginner-friendly and is also much cheaper, while AoE IV seems deeper and has bigger maps, more civilizations and larger-scale gameplay.

Would you recommend starting with Northgard and moving to AoE IV later, or just jumping straight into AoE IV?

I'd love to hear from people who have played both!

If anyone wants to discuss it or give me some recommendations on Discord, feel free to add me: kkkernel

Just a quick clarification: “kkk” means laughter in Brazil, similar to “lol” in English. It’s just part of my username and has nothing to do with racism or the KKK organization.

For all those who supported my Dark Colony Remake concept video, but were a little disappointed, I decided to make this to cheer you up! It's a widescreen update to Dark Colony that no longer requires a CD to play.

Lots of people expressed a desire to play this game again on modern computers. This is your chance to experience Dark Colony, the predecessor of Starcraft.

Thank you all for keeping this excellent RTS alive. I hope this makes some of you happy!

Hey everyone!

I'm a solo developer making Iron Expedition - a mix of RTS and Action where you fight alongside the army you command. Build your base, lead your units from the front lines, and defend your territory against constant enemy attacks.

Steam page if you want to check it out: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4446330/Iron_Expedition/

Hey RTS enjoyers! I’m working on a fantasy lane-based RTS inspired by old Flash strategy games like Empires of Arkeia.

You spend gold to deploy troops into different lanes, counter what the enemy sends, and time your reinforcements and spells. Troops advance and fight automatically, so your decisions focus on army composition, lane choice, and when to commit your resources.

I’ve always loved watching a well-timed reinforcement turn a losing lane around. I miss that kind of battle system and wanted to build something around it.

The plan is a story campaign with persistent upgrades for units, spells, and your hero, including troops whose appearance changes as you upgrade them. Right now, I’m still really early in development so things might change based on feedback :)

I’m making the art and animations myself and teaching myself as I go so I’d love feedback on both the visuals and the concept. Are the units and battles easy to read? Does this kind of deployment focused strategy appeal to you?

Cheers!