It seems that going "wide" always eclipses any sort of "tall" build and that no amount of upgrading will ever save small empires from wider ones.In oldschool RTS like C&C it's obvious because those games don't have upgrades, so all you can do is build more.That's why I'm wondering how a strategy game could make tall builds viable.Even games that do have global upgrades usually cap out at +2 or +3, like StarCraft. In Dawn of War, you can upgrade your Space Marine health and damage a little bit but never enough to make true super units.I understand why this is being done for balancing reasons and all that, but it seems there is no game that rewards a turtle player who successfully fights off rushes and then techs up. It technically works in StarCraft but not because of the teching, it's just because the rush player is too far behind after you counter him.Stronghold Crusader comes close because you can find ways to survive and defend even when your farms are being raided, but it has no teching.In the end, you won't be able to keep up with the attacker.
>>2164048I think tall is viable in every single game. Maybe not necessarily optimal but viable absolutely.
>>2164048>It seems that going "wide" always eclipses any sort of "tall" build and that no amount of upgrading will ever save small empires from wider ones.Wide builds generally mean more things to do for the player, more cities/units/numbers/area to keep track of. More effort and work demanded from the player and thus it should rightfully pay off more.Tall builds inherently have a restrictive element to them but they always emerge naturally from game states when choosing them is the logical decision, for example when your simply have no room to go wide because the map restricts it. Like being stuck on an island surrounded by oceans with no other place worth the resources to colonize or conquer.In the situation where place is available playing tall means the majority of the map remains unused and thus wasted effort, wasted data, wasted space, wasted process. Opportunities unused, if you think of 4X startegy terms +eXplore, eXpand, eXploit and eXterminate" playing tall means you are not doing the 2nd and the 3rd X-es from the 4 core fundamental principles of the game. It's like not playing 50% of the game.
>>2164048The problem with building tall is that space is limited and control of space is a zero sun game. By not actively fighting to control space, you cede space. By actively fighting to control space, you deny space to your competition. Even in a hypothetical game where building tall and upgrading existing assets is more cost effective than building new ones, the benefits of controlling space usually make it the optimal path regardless.And why would you necessarily want to invert that? Controlling space is proactive and engaged. If there was no need to interact with your opposition throughout the game, then the gameplay would revolve around SimCity base building and teaching towards inevitability. Why even have units and not just an I Win button that you tech towards? Why is it necessarily that you can't be proactive and control space with your units while also developing tall with your tech and infrastructure? Multitasking is a core component of real time strategy.I think you don't really understand the thing you want or what it would look like if you had it.
>>2164048Aren't upgrades in Starcraft super slow to research? You need like an hour to get them all.
Wide can also go tall with a bit of time. Tall can not decide to go wide without war.
>>2164048i'd argue castle rushing in aoe constitutes building tallbesides that there is only really ck2 and meiou i can think ofthe issue is that more is more and few games have resource efficiency so only games where being wide means your tech lags are ones where being tall works but, again, more is more so typically wider = more tech too
>>2164048Because you touch yourself at night and didn't have the time to learn new things.https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/fallout/images/5/51/Tabitha.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20101224215006Normal Humans can't find themselves comfortable in 3D environments because we are bipedals and designers have brain cooties.Protoss warp in buildings and units from the psionic matrix, ground planet factories, space platforms and spaceships, there is no need for modularity. Terran are young and desperate enough exploit everything without thinking about the future. The zerg just don't care.The Xel'Naga and Halo Forruners had literally space elevators and both were hunted to death, because factions were envious* of unlimited energy resource gathering. Always, Everywhere.https://youtu.be/PHaD-xZkj4A?si=Xy5R9jW-KxF8lvkvhttps://youtu.be/jvoaUUMFLm8?si=Wc9IDYutsgKI2LqRWe keep using qwerty and I am tired of it.>zsa moonlander>razer tartarusNah, just kill me already!
>>2164048I think you're approaching this from the wrong angle.Going tall is perfectly viable in games like Europa Universalis and Civilization and many nations specialize for that. It's just a different playstyle to focus on building up an overpowered starting location and relying on say a trade empire to win big. Sure playing as the usual big blobs will always be the best way to "win", but sometimes you just want to try and have fun with a different challenge than just min-maxing your land filling giga empire.But that's genres like GSG and their ilk. For your basic RTS and such camping out in one base and surrendering all resources on the map to your opponent is just dumb. So building tall is and can be a viable and fun experience, it's just that some genres are better for it than others and I couldn't think of a worse one than say competitive StarCraft.
>>2164048Go back to tower defense games friend. RTS games are clearly not for your taste.
>>2164048pick any game that has a research curve and try falling behind it>play short>die young and childless
>>2164048
>>2164048Empire Earth
>>2168044How?
>>2164048>That's why I'm wondering how a strategy game could make tall builds viable.through research, cultural, or exploration victory
>>2168073That's more of a 4X and GSG kind of thing. I think OP was wondering about it in the case of RTS titles.
>>2164048The tall/wide distinction isn't a thing in RTS. You're not supposed to limit yourself. You just attempt to succeed in spite of your circumstances, and games do allow this.
>>2168075>I think OP was wondering about it in the case of RTS titles.wide and tall don't really exist as categories in any starcraft-style RTS i've watched. The openings in those games fall on a scale from greedy, expansion-based openings where you sacrifice units for production, to aggressive, rush openings where you sacrifice your late game in an attempt to cripple or kill the opponent early.I guess in SC2, protoss plays more of a deathball style game whereas zerg tends to grab an extra base earlier than everyone else, but it's not like one faction ever has ten bases while another only has one.
>>2164048Civ 5 is a game where going tall is much better than going wide but that's because the game punishes you hard for going wide because of the retarded happiness system, increasing costs for policies and tech, and road/building maintenance. It sucks the fun out of the game because on easier difficulties were going wide is viable you'll be stomping shit anyways and on harder difficulties you're just going to lose hard if you go wide so you'll just be doing the same tall strats over and over.Anyways talking about tall vs wide in RTS is stupid since that paradigm doesn't really exist in those games but half the posts in this thread are pointing that out.
>>2164048Tall is finet. Tall Civman
>>2164106>I win buttonNot inherently tall, but Age of Empires 2 wonders let you turtle and win by doing so.
in order to stop everyone playing going tall solitaire in a game where heightmaxxing is meta you'd have to have some kind of largely space-independent contestable resource or otherwise pair tall players with wide opponents frequently enough
>>2169285lmao
>>2169321Alright good talk.
Netherlands in EU and many civs in many civ games are quite fine building tall. The "issue" is most games hesitate to punish going wide because why restrict player freedom?
>>2164048This nigga ain’t never played civ 5In Humankind both strategies seem viable.
>I should be able to forsake competing for resources with other players but win anyway because of magic
>>2169285Wonders are a stalemate breaker and sort of an anti turtling feature in a way. Instead of having to slog through turtling opponent who refused to give up you spend the resources on a wonder and force them to come to you.
>>2173645Possessing resources and using them effectively are two different things. That’s what the tall vs wide thing in games like Civ are supposed to represent,
Duke Nukem sucks
>>2164048that's just bad game balance over the asymmetrical design between wide vs. tall.plus history has taught us that wide empires always tend to implode due to their wideness and tall empires tend to collapse due to their over centralization. their own essence leads to their own demise; this should be programmed into the game mechanics.Become too wide, you become the Roman Empire.Become too tall, you become the Forbidden Kingdom/China's Last Empire.
>>2164048>It seems that going "wide" always eclipses any sort of "tall" buildas it should betallfags ruined civ, so stay in your containment series and fuck off, rts has enough problems already
>>2164048There's no tall/wide separation in RTS because by NOT actively expanding you're NOT boosting your economy and thus you are NOT able to afford the better units.By the time you reach tech 3 with just the starting base your opponent will have tech 3, control 75% of the map AND a deathball.You're essentially asking for turtling to be viable just because, you lazy fuck.
>>2164048Games keep giving you more resources than you can effectively spend before the game ends, ending up always favoring rapid expansion.
Why would you want tall to be the meta? You want to race to see who can build the game ender faster without any other fighting going on?
>>2164048EUIV had a fun way to go tall for a short bit, then the usual dorks complained to paradox going "ERRRRmmm ULM in my very-serious-vanilla-MP-game managed to have more dev than all of France combined, Please FIX!!!!"so they nerfed it into the ground.It was fun to run around with a stack as a OPM. I was good at it.
>>2164048tall vs. wide does not apply in rts games
>>2164048The closest instance of this I can think of would be something like Supreme Commander. Yes, you're still competing for control of the map but the real objective is to simply kill the opponents commander. Between the vast disparity of Tier 1 to Tier3 units, along with how you can efficiently concentrate your high tier energy/mass generation buildings under shields/missile defence. A 'tall' player with a high tech base can absolutely hold the line against a 'wide' enemy with high map control deploying T1 spam, all the while flinging nukes and artillery across the whole map to reach places their forces can't.
>>2164048just off the top of my head>markets. for example the markets in Stronghold or Sins of a Solar Empire>more upgrades than just the one per unit. possibly infinite upgrades that scale in cost per iteration. also structure upgrades>better fortifications>weapons specifically designed to devastate 'wide' strategies>better terrain advantages>some kind of mechanic that builds population 'tall' and doesn't have one population the same as a 'wide' one population>efficiency bonuses, timer bonuses, etc. for 'tall' strategies>logistics mechanics that cause 'wide' strategies to begin having sprawl penalties
>>2164048>why are games always skewed towards players who actively engage with the map?>I want to do nothing and be rewarded for it!>t. tallfag socialists
>>2164048I have the tall brainworm but I hate games that try to make tall play work. Tall play should gimp you but the offset is it's easier to manage, that's it, that's all the dynamic should be. Games where wide is the default intended experience are games where many options are viable, perhaps including tall play in some instances. Games where tall is the default intended experience are games where only tall is viable, and in fact often come down to specific builds of tall play being the only one that's viable in the whole game. Tall just isn't a solid foundation for making an interesting experience.
>>2164048C&C3:KW has super units, they're pretty tall but of course they go down if they're not properly supported.There's also unit rank (units upgrading after getting enough kills), a fully ranked stealth tank can do crazy amounts of damage.
>>2164048That's just basic availability.It's never better to have less. By its very nature to be tall is to have less. The only way to make having less better is by giving it artificial bonuses that counter the downsides, then tall becomes the meta everyone uses.The meta should always be a healthy combination of growth and expansion, with fringe strategies for tall and wide maxxing.
>>2164048Like you've been repeatedly told it's ridiculous to expect a country with ten times less resources, people and land to be just as powerful.
>>2164048bump
>>2164048What are you on about? Most of the decently popular RTS games have some flavor of fast tech to get map control or to punish opponents for going too greedy on eco. Heart of the swarm has muta rush, DT rush, etc. SC II has various tech rushes like DTs, fast air, fast caster, etc. AoE II has fast imp with some civs like the Turks specializing in rushing imp to get out enough gunpowder units to lockdown the game, then falling off a cliff powerwise if they can't immediately win from there.>>2164173Fast imperial is building tall. Fast castle is arguably more of a wide/flex build than anything else because castle is when you unlock the ability to get multiple TCs.>>2164112You can research with multiple buildings at once. They're supposed to be a significant investment, otherwise you'd always get them as soon as you had more than half a dozen of a unit.
Is there an example of a "tall" country irl that didn't either exist in a strangely peaceful place or spent millions on raiding their enemies and helping rebels despite not outright conquering them?
>>2200996Switzerland.
>>2173671Okay, but if two players are equally skilled at using resources effectively then logic follows that the one that covers more land (and therefore resources) should win, no?
>>2208255I wonder how they did it. Made themselves useful via mercenaries? Had such shitty land to invade nobody ever bothered? I know eventually they became the bank of Europe but that only came about later.
>>2209599It's the second one. Its a landlocked country with a shitton of mountainous terrain that makes it a bitch to invade. Between the Jura Mountains, The Swiss Alps, and the Plateau it may as well be a natural fortress.
>>2209599Very defensible place which also serves as a trade route locus through central europe. By being willing to trade/lend to everyone you can make money from everyone.
>>2209599The neutrality memes are more of a modern invention. Old initial territory of Switzerland was HRE subjects ruled by Habsburgs. They were lucky to have formed in an extremely defensive terrain and three major powers (France/Germany/Austria+Italy) with which you all share some cultural traits like language. Their mercenaries were in fact good but they also had great universities.There isn't a single country in the world with a similar privilege. Not even Singapore.
>>2208454Covering more land may spread thin your ability to actually make use of all that land(Example: Development/infrastructure in EU4)
