If you’re new to the Ashes of the Singularity RTS universe, let’s start with a primer:
Ashes of the Singularity is a real-time strategy game set in the near future in which players fight for control of worlds. The scale of the maps tend to be very large and are broken up into regions. Controlling a region gives the player access to the resources within which can be extracted to be used in the war effort. Each side starts with a central base that if destroyed, causes them to lose the game.
Resources are consumed as they are used rather than up-front, meaning a player can order the production of units and buildings without having to stockpile the full amount. Instead, the skill is in trying to spend the same amount of resources per turn as you are extracting, making economic skill become one of the factors towards victory.
Because of the scale of the game, the pacing tends to be somewhat slower than has traditionally been seen in the genre. Unit composition and placement matter most and, in fact, units do not have special abilities that are activated by the player. This is a game about conquering territory through military and economic strategy. Fast reflexes (actions per minute) do not play into it.
Now, if you love RTS games like I do, you probably wonder how this game compares to other games of the genre. I’ve seen Ashes of the Singularity I compared to Supreme Commander (or Total Annihilation) a lot. This is mostly because of the scale and the “streaming” economy. This makes me a little sad because it means that the streaming economy mechanic didn’t become the main way resource management in RTS games were handled.
In my opinion, from a fun point of view, I much prefer not having to wait to build a barracks or queue up units until I have saved up enough resources. Having resources spent as they are consumed is probably the biggest reason Supreme Commander (and Ashes of the Singularity) don’t require a high APM and I really wish more games adopted that innovation. Until then, we’ll just have to keep polishing our statue of Chris Taylor.
Below I will put the broad strokes of the RTS family in a table. If you disagree or if miss something, please add it in the comments below. Note: this chart is ridiculously over-simplified.
I’d like to add more rows to this, but it’s a challenge since we don’t want to get into the minutia. C&C is particularly tough because it depends on which iteration. This isn’t really meant as a feature comparison, but rather a way of seeing the different “families”. I really should have Dawn of War here instead of Company of Heroes, but I felt, given the thousands of hours I put into CoH, I owed it to that game even though Dawn of War came first. I also feel like Northgard deserves an entry. Of course there are new games that have picked up the torch like Tempest Rising, which comes from the C&C family, and Stormgate, which comes from the StarCraft family.
Other shoutouts would be Homeworld, Majesty, AI War: Fleet Command, Kohan, and Myth. I list these in terms of being progenitors of RTS mechanics. You could argue that WarCraft 3 is different enough from Warcraft 2 to deserve its own spot, and Warcraft itself is progenitor of StarCraft. It’s just turtles all the way down. And who will be first to mention I didn’t list Dune or Powermonger? Powermonger the FIRST RTS. There, I said it!
Anyway, post your thoughts and I’ll do a newer, better version of this. The hard part (for me) is coming up with 1 or 2 word descriptions without trivializing the feature.