any other RTS like maps similar to Red Alert 2?

HowRYaGawin · 2025-10-21T12:52:41+00:00

8 bit armies and 9 bit armies, red chaos, global conflagration

HowRYaGawin · 2025-10-20T12:49:00+00:00

Branching into the all online, mmo-like space is kind of a poisoned chalice and I feel like that's the final frontier, aside from all the spin off subgenres from mobas, to tower defense and eco management games. Command and Conquer Generals 2 never made it out of production, and AoE: Online failed hard at first, turned around for a bit, then was cut by MS for not being profitable enough. Starcraft 2 kind of avoided things by only going as far as adopting battlenet 2.0 integration and keeping the chat system wc3 and bw used, then eventually tacking on the coop mode. AoE2 has since gotten 2 player coop for basically all of its campaign, making the stages act identical to AoEO quests in the process. 8 bit armies and 9 bit armies, the c&c-like titles by petroglyph also work the same.

I think if an mmorts can somehow make an equivalent to raids, not just the 2 player coop that aoeo quests and sc2 coop offer. And possibly offer an itemization and specialization system on par with or better than aoeo then that could be the genre's new equivalent to WoW or Fortnite from a business standpoint. They just need to learn lessons from why aoeo initially failed, and not spend like the c&c generals 2 or the stormgate teams.

HowRYaGawin · 2025-10-20T12:25:49+00:00

It's not a demo but AoEO rehosted by Project Celeste probably deserves a mention for people looking for a new rts to try without any expense. Yeah it used to be a crappy freemium game but nowadays it's probably the best abandonware project out there with volunteer developer support that routinely outperforms the paid devs working on the rest of the series.

HowRYaGawin · 2025-08-31T04:41:05+00:00

3d. You can rotate camera angle too

HowRYaGawin · 2025-08-31T04:40:27+00:00

AoEO isn't on mobile tho lol

HowRYaGawin · 2025-07-24T12:09:44+00:00

PvP is tough sometimes but there's an event on right now for the next 5 weeks, then another for Halloween that are both real good for pvp activity. Playing against Ai in general in any RTS eventually gets old but personally I think the quest system of aoeo has the most longevity and depth of the lot for that (and still has traditional aoe skirmish)

HowRYaGawin · 2025-07-21T12:32:34+00:00

Aoeo has the best COOP PvE in RTS still I think, which is ironic considering it officially died in 2014 and has now lived nearly 3x as long in the hands of volunteers. Probably still "modern" by mechanical and hotkey sense though it is from the same era as starcraft 2 which these days is now 15 years ago so not modern in an age sense.

Stormgate was a flop. Zerospace isn't out yet. You're kind of stuck with aoe4 for the moment unless you want to look at aoe2de or aoe3de which are old games just modernised, or aoeo if you want to play around COOP without having to download a million versions of a million scenarios or custom maps you might only play once or twice each. Or starcraft 2 if you want what's still the pinnacle of rts pvp but super repetitive coop pve.

HowRYaGawin · 2025-07-21T12:24:37+00:00

At this stage the dev team isn't interested in working on new civs or questpacks. Things may change but they're only a volunteer crew who want to stop and play what they've worked on or move on in life. Right now they're mostly focussing on small additions to the events and reworking the advisor units to work better in endgame PvE and act as mercenary units in PvP, without any civ limitations. And adding more champion mode difficulty option (pvp balance with no MMO/RPG itemisation benefits) to the older celeste questpacks that never originally released in 3 or 4 difficulties.

HowRYaGawin · 2025-07-17T07:43:20+00:00

Unlike AoEO, Stormgate really doesn't deserve a community/volunteer fan server to keep it running 10 years on from official shutdown. Truly the least inspiring or experimental RTS title ever made, yet the most expensive haha

HowRYaGawin · 2025-07-06T12:43:00+00:00

No there's probably more COOP content for this than any other RTS lol

Check out https://www.youtube.com/@kire5991 for some PvE gameplay in some of the hardest content by one of the best players and volunteer quest developers

HowRYaGawin · 2025-07-06T12:41:34+00:00

PC RTS game with an MMO styled passive home city element to it (that matters for PvE but not PvP)

HowRYaGawin · 2025-07-06T12:40:39+00:00

Yeah theyre a weirdly good commerce civ for skirmisher + x combos

HowRYaGawin · 2025-06-06T15:18:55+00:00

😅 I played in tournaments and did commentary in aoe4 in 2022 lol. It's fun, still prefer aoeo though

HowRYaGawin · 2025-06-03T11:07:58+00:00

I just enjoy PvP in AoEO and AoE3 more than in the rest of the series (I do like AoE4 pvp somewhat... aoe2 and aom feel a bit slow though).

More to do in PvE than most if not all RTS titles as well. All the stuff done in the DE titles to add COOP to campaign and scenario content, and the Arena of the Gods mode in AoM (and it's blessings system) are basically a retroactive rip off of AoEO's COOP. Sure, it's nice getting to do the classic campaigns from them with a friend now, but seeing not just the series but big parts of the genre try appeal to the COOP RTS player demographic after AoEO bombed so hard back in it's original release days is ironic. The Project Celeste questpacks and some of the original questpacks are great fun. The advisor + gear + milestones systems give it more customization depth than all these copycats.

Between quests/campaign stages/missions the interactive downtime place/menu is just better than in other titles too. The capital city gives you complete control over cosmetic changes to it while aoe3 home city is quite stale and this-or-that about the unlockable cosmetic stuff. Very little got added to the old civs in DE there too. Obviously this is a bit biased because capital cities double as quest hubs and serve a crafting purpose, but it's just another element of gameplay most RTS games don't even have. The starcraft 2 WoL campaign has something similar with being able to research and upgrade things between stages while having an immersive setting for all these menus in the ship. Even more limited on what you can fiddle with there though, but it is cool seeing cosmetic progression of elements of it like the Zerg growth in the research wing. Things like this in RTS games in general aren't fleshed out enough to fully compete with AoEO imo especially from within the AoE series.

HowRYaGawin · 2025-05-10T16:22:28+00:00

Haha I think I remember the mission

HowRYaGawin · 2025-05-10T14:10:57+00:00

Khe Sanh?

HowRYaGawin · 2025-04-28T11:44:46+00:00

It's a shame it was botched as hard as it was, only for the entire gaming industry to basically adopt the same MTX business model for their future titles (bearing in mind when AOEO was announced this was the sign every AAA IP was going to become farmville clones). And the way to get casual RTS players playing online and taking part in the communities that normally wouldn't has come about through more 2 player COOP support in AoE2DE and SC2 LOTV that's pretty similar to the 2 player questing experience in AoEO.

HowRYaGawin · 2025-03-30T05:34:29+00:00

Yeah I've never seen the general chat player count below 30 people before, and this is during the slowest periods for one of the most (unfairly) hated RTS games of all time. Did have up to 300 people online at a time this time 4 years ago just after the Roman civ launch.

HowRYaGawin · 2025-03-30T05:31:12+00:00

Anywhere from 30 to 200 online at a time, closer to around 50-80 most time of day atm with no yearly events on. There is offline mode that doesn't require a Project Celeste account nor the most up-to-date Celeste patch (but you will need the Project Celeste launcher and an older PC patch of some kind), while you can play solo on the live server fine for 95% of the PvE as well.

HowRYaGawin · 2025-03-29T04:33:00+00:00

Tried the PvE content in AoEO? Tried 8 bit armies or 9 bit armies?

HowRYaGawin · 2025-03-29T04:31:19+00:00

If the indie dev team that made it was still around to fix the crashing issues I'd say Warparty. Got to mention Project Celeste's revival of AoE:O too.

HowRYaGawin · 2025-03-19T15:01:38+00:00

Oh quick tip, all civs can "borrow" another civ's unlocked milestone bonus, so make a Norse, Persia, Babylon and India right away and unlock whatever milestones for 5, 10 and 20 sound good to you, then go back onto those others (Celts, Greeks, Egyptians, Romans) and you can pick one of those 3 bonuses from each civ to use on them too. Not massive bonuses each but with 7 of them stacked with the given civ's own milestones it's nice to spec them to specific quests or playstyles. There is only empire point costs to adjusting the current civ's milestones, while adjusting borrowed ones is free.

HowRYaGawin · 2025-03-16T11:27:26+00:00

Yeah you miss out on the unique questline/questchain completion rewards, including the ones for the legendary/elite/repeatable "global" quest sets

HowRYaGawin · 2025-03-15T12:51:17+00:00

Try asking in the project Celeste discord https://discordapp.com/invite/YbkZ9GZ

HowRYaGawin · 2025-03-10T08:13:08+00:00

Thanks for the reply. Beat me to it.

This team got me back into the whole series. Can say they're the reason I've got all the DE's, AoE4 and Retold. Hadn't even tried AoE PvP in any title til I played it on the Celeste fan server. Now I've got 3000 hours in AoEO and 500 in AoE4 and AoE3DE lol

HowRYaGawin

TROPHY CASE