EVOLVING A GENRE

HOW DUNE II GAVE BIRTH TO THE RTS...

RESOURCE MANAGEMENT

Whether it’s spice, tiberium, construction materials or gold, RTS games are always about collecting and then efficiently spending resources. Defending your resource collectors obviously becomes a big part of the game, except for

Total Annihilation, which innovated by removing any kind of ‘harvester’.

CONQUEST MAP

Making progress through an RTS is often presented as a military campaign, with a map view of the progress being made. Some games, even Intelligent Games’ Dune game, Emperor, went on to make these choices about which mission to undertake even have an effect on the mission and gameplay.

MOUSE CONTROLS

Easily the most important innovation that Westwood brought with Dune II was the move to mouse controls, and while these weren’t context-based as they would go on to be in every RTS game ever, it still was a huge game changer in the speed and efficiency of play.

UNIQUE UNITS

While some RTS games take this more seriously than others, having units or distinct abilities for each faction helps to create different play styles for each faction and through that empower players to have favourites. It also means that knowing your enemy is important so you’ll know how to counter it, which Starcraft is now famous for.

BASE BUILDING

The reason base building has been so important to the RTS genre is that it creates strategy around not only where to place your base, but also having a place to gather resources centrally while quietly building up your army. It means you need to be clever about where things are placed for better defence.

TECH TREES

Newly constructed buildings mean access to more powerful units, upgrades or further construction options. This is where a lot of the pressure comes from when playing an RTS online, since knowing the ‘right’ route and what options you have is critical. Age Of Empires and Warcraft specifically leant in hard on upgrade tech trees.

FOG OF WAR

The idea that you needed to scout out the enemy through the ‘fog of war’ has been one of the most defining aspects of the RTS genre, though this would later evolve so that only the area your units were in had any visibility.