is shogun a real-time strategy game or a real time tactical game?

[sugargun]

their have been some questions raised about this?? some people are calling shogun and games like shogun (sid meier`s antietam, ground control, etc..etc..) real-time tactical games.

if you look in the dictionary you will see their is a difference between tactics and strategy.. so anyways what do you think is shogun a new genre that should be called REALTIME TACTICS or can we still call this type of game realtime strat???

personally, i think shogun is a RTT game.

[ltj]

short answer: it's both.

[BakaGaijin]

Considering that most examples of Real-time Strategy involve unit production and building construction on the battlefield, it would seem that Shogun doesn't quite fit into that arena. Since Shogun splits the production/construction elements from the battles, you can't really call it an RTS. Of course, the battlefield mode is only one part of the campaign, so it's not purely Real-time Tactics, either.

About the most comprehensive simple description you can come up with for Shogun is "Wargame". That's what it is. If you want to get really technical, you can call it Intertwined Turn-Based Strategy and Real-Time Tactics. ITBSRTT. But that's a bit of a mouthful, even as an acronym.

[Dark Phoenix]

Did you come up with that all by yourself.


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DoragonPhoenix of the Clan Doragon

[ltj]

and baka gave you the long answer. ;o

[Shiro]

I second Baka, it's a Wargame plain and simple.

[Anssi Hakkinen]

And it isn't as if STW was the first game to be mislabeled a strategy game when it was in fact a tactical game - this mistake in genre names dates from (at least) the 80s. Good going BakaGaijin-san, a "wargame" really does sum it all up.

In keeping with the "wrong" naming scheme, I think STW, Ground Control, Antietam! and any newcomers could be designated 3D RTSs; after all, Myth was a RTS, and it didn't have troop building either. (On the other hand, there's a STW clone in production that features troop production on the battlefield... )

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"Si j'étais né en 17 à Leidenstadt / Sur les ruines d'un champ de bataille / Aurais-je été meilleur ou pire que ces gens / Si j'avais été Allemand?"
- Jean-Jacques Goldman: Né en 17 à Leidenstadt

Shogun is real-time strategy and turn-based strategy as well.

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Honour to Clan No Fear.

Visit my resource centre at: http://terazawa.totalwar.org

[BakaGaijin]

How do they plan to justify that, Anssi? By "STW clone", you do mean that it's based in 16th Century Japan, right?

Now that just puzzles me. What do you do, set up a magical Troop Tent that pops out units of Yari? And then upgrade to a Battlefield Stable to make cavalry?

Oh, wait... that's EXACTLY what normal RTS games do. And it's just as bloody silly with them, too. Probably the only one that came close to making sense in the production aspect was Homeworld. The whole civilization is on the ship, so you unfreeze flight crews as soon as your production lines make their ships. The magical infantry barracks in other RTS games have always bugged me, though. Which is not to mention the fact that it's just a poor model. Gives way to idiotic "build orders" over true strategy and paper-rock-scissors gameplay instead of true tactics. Bah, I say!

[smoothdragon]

I'd label Shogun as a hybrid RTS/TBS. There is the real-time element of battle, and the turn-based strategic element where you plot out your moves.

[This message has been edited by smoothdragon (edited 03-29-2001).]

[Anssi Hakkinen]

BakaGaijin-san, the game I was referring to is Warrior Kings: their homepage is here. NoDachiWarrior-san posted a thread about it a month or so ago.

It's a STW clone only in the sense that it has a similar 3D environment and interface, and the timing of its production clearly looks like it was started once it was clear that STW & Ground Control would be succesful. However, in order not to make it too obvious, they set it in a Generic Fantasy Environment (*sigh*). I doubt it'll be any good.

But we're getting OT again: if you want more information, I'll dig the old thread up at Off-Topic.

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"Si j'étais né en 17 à Leidenstadt / Sur les ruines d'un champ de bataille / Aurais-je été meilleur ou pire que ces gens / Si j'avais été Allemand?"
- Jean-Jacques Goldman: Né en 17 à Leidenstadt

[Laertes]

I'm also with the hybrid RTT/TBS crowd (although it's unusual for a TBS; it's not pure you-go-I-go, but more like _Diplomacy_: process-the-orders-simultaneously).

Before a battle even begins, you've already decided:

1. Troop composition. VERY important, since it can greatly limit your tactical choices; an SA-heavy force needs to behave very differently than a YC-heavy force, for instance.

2. Where/whether to fight. The ground dictates many other concerns; taking a single-bridge province allows different tactics from a double-bridge province, which in turn is different from a highland province...

3. Your primary objective for the battle. You may simply want to hold the province at all costs; perhaps you're primarily after killing the Taisho in battle; perhaps you're trying to weaken his cavalry or other elements...


Once you reach the battlefield, then, you're no longer making large-scale policy decisions, but implementing them. It does not make much sense to have a strategy of seizing high ground, for instance, but as a tactic that does co-exist well with a strategy of training troops and designing army compositions to better take advantage of high ground. For that matter, a tactical envelopment is much different from a strategic envelopment; the former is primarily a method used to achieve a goal -- cutting off retreat so you can kill as many as possible, while the latter is a policy goal whose justifications may be more elaborate and whose implementation still needs deciding...

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He is justly served; It is a poison temper'd by himself.

[Draksen]

I don't know if we can consider STW as a RTS game... IMO, Age of Kings IS a RTS game, just like StarCraft, Warcraft II, or Kingdom under fire.

I mean, the main difference is the economical aspect of the game. In a "classical RTS game" you must be able to manage you economy and your battles AT THE SAME TIME... and often you don't have really the time to think about a strategy, you must LEARN a strategy before the game and then apply it during the game (just like fast caslteling or feodal rushing in AOK).
The bad point with those games, is that they become too "mathematical" and require very good reflexes and execution speed (with the mouse).
IMO, because of this, STW is much more realistic. But once again, it's "my opinion".



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Kazamatsuri clan
www.geocities.com/draksen

[Rath]

"tactics is the art of using troops to win the battle, strategy is the art of using battles to win the war"
- Clausewitz (i think)

Therefore it is both.

[Kagnok]

You'll have to specify STW's historical aspects, which set it aside from purely fictional games. H-ITBSRTT? BakaGaijin has alluded to this, but you got to have an "H" in there.

STW = H-ITBSRTT

(Now, integrate and divide by PI for the patch)


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Being killed is bad.

[Peptis]

I'd say that STW has RTT battles. TBS is what you do on the main map.

The fact that games like startcraft are called RTS is a misnomer. They should be called RTT. The fact that you can build troops and harvest resources in them doesn't make them strategic since there is only one strategy; Harvest lots of stuff, build good units and then rush the enemy. Rushing the enemy isn't a really advanced tactic anyway, so I guess we could just call those type of games "Real time".

We could take it one step further and use the acronym GWAIN. This comes from the acronym TWAIN (technology without an interesting name) that is used for things like scanners and the like. We can just replace the 'technology' part with 'game'

I'm not trying to put these games down, they can be fun to play, I just disagree with the naming convention.

Oh, and sorry for the long post. I've raved on for ages about something that is not at all important. Shame on me.

[ShaiHulud]

And my post belongs to the PWAIP genre...Posts Without an Interesting Point...hehe

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Wind fells blossoms, rain
fells steel,yet bamboo bends and drinks

[High Voltage]

Tactics refers to movements you do every five minutes or so. Strategy is your overall plan. Usually tactics win a battle not strategy. But you have to have a good strategy, or plan of battle, before you can make can make good decisions on the fly.

[Malek the Sarafan]

I've bought almost every stratagy game on the market tyring to find one that allows heavy use of both stratagy and tactics, and has a realistic physics system and gameplay. There is this one game coming up later this year that you must train your civilians as soldiers, you train them for as long as you want, the longer the better they are, when you want to upgrade weapons, armor, ect you must first research how to make the new items then take each unit to the blacksmith or whatever individually. That is what i've been looking for in a RTS. I bought shogun because so far it allows the heaviest use of stratagy in the map view and tactics during battle, not to mention a rather realistic physics model and realistic battle gameplay.

[High Voltage]

Wow what's that game called?

[Malek the Sarafan]

To tell ya the truth i completely forget. I will browse around IGN and try to find it again.

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"Never! I'll hack you from crotch to gizzard and feed what's left to your brides!"

[maroberts]

I think any game which gets more complex than Shogun in terms of research and production might suddenly find that it has lost the most important element - **FUN**

Shogun has a number of faults, but on the good side it is complex enough to be challenging with out being so complex as to be anal.