We’re ecstatic to be a part of Steam's Real-Time Strategy Fest, along with a wealth of other amazing RTS games!

Real-Time Strategy games have been around since the early 1990s and we’re honoured to be listed among, and to have played around with, this diverse genre with the Circle Empires series. With Circle Empires 2 on the horizon, we thought it’d be a fun idea to dive into a few RTS games from the past & present that have been a huge inspiration for the Circle Empires series.

Here’s Mikhel Trei, developer at Luminous, on some of his personal favourites:

My favourite RTS games are Warcraft 3, Age of Empires 1 & 2, Total Annihilation, and Command & Conquer: Red Alert.

To me, Warcraft 3 has the best 4-player Free For All mode in any RTS. What makes it so good for me, is the fact that it is reliant on heroes, who gain power by fighting. This provides a unique incentive to engage in battles during Free For All games, which otherwise reward passive play and result in stale games when players play correctly.

Age of Empires 1 and 2 are what I grew up with. I've probably played through AOE1’s Rise of Rome expansion demo campaign a thousand times as a kid, because I didn't have the full version of the game. Age of Empires 2 places you in this incredibly engaging fantasy of being a medieval king and I used to play the 1v7 single-player mode quite a lot.

Total Annihilation is one of the first RTS I ever came across. I remember seeing it at a friend's place and being mesmerised. It has a fantastic unit command system, great 3D spacial physics, a wide array of units and so much more. It did require a beefy computer for its time and it's overall a bit less intuitive than other, non-SciFi RTSs (Just because you're in the future and don't have horses and men with sharp sticks that are self-explanatory). But like.. sea planes that can land underwater and flying builders that create cannons that shoot on the other side of map… This game is just great.

I feel like for Red Alert, all I need to say is: mass teslacoils and air strikes.
Since these are all big titles, I feel like I should mention a few games that, in my opinion, should get more recognition.:

• Knights and Merchants had a really cool economy system. Fans made a complete rebuild of the game called KamRemake.
  
• Beasts and Pumpkins had a cool live economy where people would be born and get old, eat bread, fight each other when they're in bad mood and fight giant bees by throwing rocks over a fence.

Thanks for joining us in this celebration of one of our favourite genres! Check out the other great games in Steam's Real-Time Strategy Fest, and share your favorite RTS titles in the comments!

Happy strategizing!

Luminous

https://store.steampowered.com/app/834740/Circle_Empires/?curator_clanid=1137099