I'm gonna start a weekly Sunday evening thread where we all talk about what we've been playing the past week.
I have been doing a replay of Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice this week. It's one of my favorite games and I was surprised how much muscle memory Ive retained for most of the major boss fights.
What is the same if I've played C&C Generals or Dawn of War: So, there is some base building and real time unit command with health, armour, ranged units/buffs etc. This part is not super deep on its own. After that, it deviates from the standard RTS fare. Timeframe is roughly Supreme Commander medium maps (slower than starcraft or C&C, faster than HoI or Stellaris). Rushing is almost impossible (if units are just moving somewhere, they run out of supply if they're not close to a friendly village). I'm slowly doing one mission per night while my meds kick in. Just setting expectations.
Multiple paths to victory!
Each path to victory comes with a bunch of shenanigans with its associated mechanic. With CHOAM shares you can do a pump and dump, with Landsraad you can get subsidies or hand out penalties etc.
You kinda have to spec into one or two depending on your comfort levels and sometimes the mission will bar you from some or give you a different one.
Multiple factions!
Diplomacy is every match! You want to win, so allying long term usually means your one AI ally will become your major rival. So pretty much every game involves some diplomancy. There's some treaties and stuff. Not as fleshed out.
Dawn of War: Dark Crusade style campaign. Each full map game comes with different little bonuses that you can invest in. Also, losing one game doesn't knock you out of the campaign. (I lost 3 games in my current campaign and am looking at victory). There's a bit of positive feedback here, but I think the AI faction does too.
You have to capture towns, which will usually have a couple of units defending. This has a 4X-but-real-time feel. To get to another faction militarily, you generally have to have friendly villages all the way up to their territory. You need to generate "Authority" resource
Definitely sounds interesting enough for me to check out. Thanks for taking the time to write this up. I'll probably give the game a shot over the weekend as it seems like something that will probably be up my alley.