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Of Hydralisks & Phalanxes #2: The Perfect Real-Time Strategy Game

When you're playing video games, do you just want to turn off your brain, blow up stuff, and collect loot? Then Of Hydralisks & Phalanxes isn't for you. In a column with a name as awkward and parochial as some of the games themselves, strategy wonk Tom Chick takes a look at the latest and greatest in real-time strategy, turn-based games, city builders, wargames, and other such quasi-cerebral pursuits.

The Road to Perfection

I don't make games; I just play them. Which is too bad for you, because if I made games, I would make the perfect real-time strategy game. Not that I have anything against turn-based games, but the perfect one of those has already been made. Several times, in fact. Brian Reynolds' Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri , Imperialism II: The Age of Exploration , and Sid Meier's Civilization IV , for instance.

Fortunately, most of the hard work for the perfect real-time strategy game has already been done. It just hasn't been done in the same game. All I have to do is clump together bits from other games, do some quick testing to make sure it doesn't crash, and, voila -- the perfect RTS! I'll give you a sneak peak, but you have to promise not to show it to any actual game developers who might steal my idea. The perfect RTS will include the following things.

The spectacle of Sins of a Solar Empire . You can't swing a dead Zergling without hitting a gorgeous RTS. But you won't find any built as carefully as Sins of a Solar Empire when it comes to letting you admire the graphics. Lovely, amazing spaceship models! Sublime, cosmic skyboxes! Explosions and lasers and missiles and fighters! And an interface to let you play from whatever view you want! Queue up a dozen frigates and rally them to a system halfway across the map, all the while admiring a border skirmish at some far-flung crystal mining outpost around a gas giant. Using Sins as a model, my perfect RTS won't make you choose between graphics and gameplay.


The asymmetry of StarCraft . As anyone bored of chess knows, asymmetry is inherently more interesting than symmetry. StarCraft introduced the idea that each side (you need at least three, natch) needs its own unique toys with their own unique rules. Since then, it's a rare RTS that doesn't try to recreate StarCraftian asymmetry. My RTS will be no exception!

The mix of fantasy and reality from Age of Mythology .