Writing this post as a clearinghouse for ambient observations. Written from the perspective of a scrub who watches pro games sometimes.
Starcraft
Information can vary from extremely cheap to extremely expensive, but because of the simplicity of tech trees, much can be gleaned from seeing just one unit or one structure. At higher and higher levels, the metagame becomes more constraining and players get better about guarding their secrets, so information becomes much more expensive and much more valuable. Probably still my favourite RTS in terms of information economy. (at least in terms of the highly standardized map designs that pro players seem to expect.)
Supreme Commander/Zero-K
Information is pretty much always very cheap. Scout or spy planes are just cheap as hell, and if you spend enough you can get a total view of what your enemy is up to. Long unit travel times mean this cheap information gets more valuable on bigger and bigger maps, since you can just start building the counter as your opponent's strategy develops. Nukes are a great example of this: you should pretty much never get surprise nuked at a high level since if someone's building one, you should already know. (afaik, less confident about this assessment. there may also be exceptions depending on map design.)
Warzone 2100
I don't know what the fuck is going on here man. It seems like all the pros play on ultra-simplified, super high econ maps, which is fair, given the severe complexity of the tech tree and the worthlessness of information compared to its moderate expense — pursuing a specific tech branch does not really require a lot of commitment in the same way as Starcraft.
I spent a little while playing my buddy in 1v1s in this game on the stock maps and we would always kill one another in the super early game based on MG/flamer tank rush tactics. Games on stock maps have almost no stability. I doubt it would be possible to reach the end of the tech tree in even the most developed meta. Fucked up!
Others
Would be nice to hear from some Warcraft or C&C heads. Or some folks who played/watched the original Total Annihilation to see if the fixed camera and old-school map design meta affects information flow. Also especially interested to hear from some Wargame/SB/Warno players since the doctrine in those games seems overdetermined compared to something like Starcraft. Dawn of War 2 seems like more of a very focused micro contest, edging into fighting game territory. No idea what's up with Age of Empires.
I think DoW1 (soulstorm., etc.) was peak 1v1 RTS design. Yes, it needed more balancing, and 9 asymmetric races is comically too many, but it's basic principles destroy SC in terms of good game design and good UI.
DoW2 was hot garbage, but still fun and pretty good overall. Better for 3v3s than DoW1. They could made a better DoW1 or pivoted harder into some cooler/better thought out ideas, but did neither with DoW3.
CNC, RA, then RA2 were my fav game before DoW. I'm looking forward to OpenRA2, but basically I'm over the entire "ore mining" paperclip optimizing subgenre of RTS. The fact that so many rumors of upcoming games want to 1:1 clone SC, or the only most archaic parts of SC like destroy-your-mouse-clicking instead of innovate makes me feel like the genre is dead.
Anyways, I'm working on a turn based strategy indie game (think AW2 retro-like) and would love to hear what anyone thinks about AW2's design or what changes they'd make to AW2. I'm not 1:1 cloning, it's just the closest for comparison.
It's been a while but in Age of Empires, at least the 2nd one which I think is still the most popular, info is pretty crucial because of how hard certain units counter others.
I think pretty much every civ/game mode starts with a scout too and unless you're really bad at micromanaging it, it shouldn't be at risk of dying for like 20 minutes even if you're keeping constant tabs on the enemy.
Supreme Commander air scouts are cheap but the extremely variable map sizes sometimes means that information can get out of date very quickly since it takes a long time for the next flight to get to a point of interest. It's also more feasible to hide base branches on larger maps due to size and travel times.
It kind of has to be this way because Commanders getting ganked would be a huge problem if info was both cheap and timely.
Nukes are a great example of this: you should pretty much never get surprise nuked at a high level since if someone’s building one, you should already know.
Sounds like someone forgot the all-important teleporting stealthed Billy nuke
On a more serious note, getting good up-to-date intel in SupCom ranges from absurdly easy to literally almost impossible depending on map size and layout. Air scouts are only good if you can squeeze them past your opponent's interceptor/air superiority fighter doomstack and they don't have enough ground AA to prevent you from penetrating to their backlines.
After reading the other SupCom response and then this, I'm just gonna go reinstall the game. Didn't realise there was so much complexity to the information game. What a banger.
Gyle's casts are very entertaining, and Willow (the player in that cast pulling unfathomable shithousery to win the game) has a reputation for pulling wins out of nowhere like that. Very highly recommended.
Wargame/WARNO
In these games, unit vision is pretty severely limited compared to others, which leads to a lot of being shot by enemies you can't see. Recon units are thus a completely essential function of your army on the front lines, as well as being used for high risk high reward behind-enemy-lines stuff so that you can snipe enemy command units or see what units your opponent is spawning in. In fact the best units in these games tend to be recon units that happen to have good weapons, since they can operate independently and acquire/shoot targets quickly, making them much more low risk/high reward than others in their class - but these units are balanced out by high cost and low availability, while the cheapest and most available recon units generally don't have a weapon at all.
One interesting thing about recon in these games though is that certain terrain basically makes it impossible to see inside it - specifically towns and forests. The only way to get info on those areas tend to be to send in infantry, which if both players are doing it to the same place at the same time leads to the situation where infantry squads are "grinding" away at each other for long portions of the match.
I wanna see someone analyze the info economy of Achron because it's literally the 5D chess meme
