Hand-Eye Coordination: Why I fail at RTS

Hello, folks! It’s me again, here to saturate your blog tab.

Anyway, one of the earliest types of games that I’ve played between Sonic the Hedgehog and drowning people in Rollercoaster Tycoon in my younger years was real-time strategy games. You’ve probably heard it from a previous blog, and I may be suffering from serious memory failures, but hell, I’m willing to type it up again.

So here goes the story: my very first real-times strategy was Age of Empires. You know, the first one? It was really neat and all; despite its dated technology (and therefore limited movements and options), it was a very elegantly made video game for its time. The AIs functioned within their capabilities, and there was a great range of units to use that played in a nice rock-paper-scissors fashion, albeit a bit more complex than that. Of course, being the dumb idiot I was I used cheats. Boy, would that catch up to me in the future. Nothing but “no fog,” “reveal map,” “steroids” and “hoyohoyo” for every single game I played with a functional town center; for those which didn’t, I just used “diediedie” or something.

Funny story, these cheats were. One time, I decided (for what reason I’ll never know) to play a game of death match, where players all started with a bulk of resources along with their basic Stone Age starter kit. Anyway, I plugged the first usual codes in (like steroids), and decided to bring up a big daddy for backup. Big daddies are these sleek, black cars that fire rockets, dealing massive area-effect damage to its recipient. Unfortunately, my computer friends are obviously faster than me (and probably any sort of human), so before I could so much as build a barracks, they’ve already teched to Iron Age. The nearest AI already had guard towers up by, like 00:30, got a priest to convert my sole “military” unit (my big daddy), and laid siege to my essentially nonexistent base by the minute’s mark. Not pretty.

So, I was a game cheater in elementary school. Sue me. That continued into Starcraft. Damn, Blizzard made one fine game.

Nothing said God like “power overwhelming.” Enemies and unaffiliated AIs did no damage whatsoever (which made in-game cutscenes a bit awkward when they came up). Now I see that that was also a really bad thing, because then I learned just to make one of everything, and I was golden. In reality, I wasn’t. I played one game on multiplayer, and was what could be best described as lollygagging, and no sooner did I pick up some more probes did a zergling rush erased me from the face of the map. Tried again with a different player, they amassed dragoons by the ten minute mark. Dead.

I had no sense of building several military buildings, no sense of add-ons or the sort, no sense of how to amass a good army to defend against a threat. Nothing. I recently watched a bunch of videos by some guy named TotalBiscuit, and he was playing copper level in Starcraft 2 (which I presume to be the lowest level). His series stated that he sucked at Starcraft 2, and he was doing better than I was in my years.

And this ineptitude really followed me for the rest of my RTS career. I couldn’t understand why I lost in games in Civilization 3, cheated my way through Age of Empires 2, and really cheated my way through Age of Empires 3 and Age of Mythology.

It took me to Age of Mythology to realize, “I’m playing this game wrong.”

That was when I began playing like an actual player. Sort of.

Well, I began without the speed-up boost cheat that I’ve definitively used in all of my other RTS games (except Civ 3 for obvious reasons). That was as far as I got in Age of Mythology; I still relied on hacked god powers and my builds were still absolute crap. The only other thing I think I did right was my economy; I would have an outrageous amount of workers up at any given time.

Then I got to Age of Empires 3. By then, I got much smoother in my gameplay. (Okay, so I was playing at sandbox difficulty. SUE ME.) I learned the importance of scouting (it was kind of a given when you had an explorer), and began understanding the concept of choke points (unfortunately, some maps didn’t have chokes). I also found out the necessity of having more than one of the same military building to pump out units in a constant stream–even with the added bonus of group unit building in queues, there were times when that just wasn’t enough, as I found out when a medium-level AI decided to park a fort outside my base.

I went back to Starcraft a bit. It was a bit awkward playing it again, this time without cheats. While I struggled in that I didn’t have an obvious build, nor did I have an obvious plan, I fared significantly better. I was able to manage my resources, guard my choke points (somewhat, before zerglings nearly overran the position), and build several gateways or barracks.

I really feel like I’m ready for a true-blue multiplayer now. I can’t say that I’ll be any good at it, no. But with Starcraft 2 a real leap forward in time and tech, who’s to say I can’t play? (Well, first I need to acquire the game.)

Because, in the words of TotalBiscuit, I am darkness, and I suck at Starcraft 2.