Real-Time Strategy Games - Too Many Clicks?

simoniker writes "A new Gamasutra article asks provocatively in its synopsis: 'Could games like Civilization benefit from putting their interfaces on a diet? Can a player control too many objects at once in a strategy game?' Are RTS titles too UI-intensive? The author notes: 'Even for a Civ addict like me, the game isn't much fun after about 1800. Too many clicks. I counted the clicks, mouse movements, and keystrokes that it took me to get through one move of Civilization III in the year 1848. Many hours later, when that turn was done, I'd counted 422 mouse clicks, 352 mouse movements, 290 key presses, 23 wheel scrolls, and 18 screen pans to scroll the screen.'"

Comments

Automation

[Iamthefallen]

From TFA:
I was attempting to construct a railway line connecting the north end to the south end of my civilization.
[Snip] ...
I needed to assign about a hundred workers to building the railway line in order to get it built before being overrun. For each worker, I had to click on it once to bring it into focus; then type 'g' to begin a movement, scroll to its starting point on the railway line, and click again. Later, when it reached that point, I would have to type "ctrl-r" to build a railroad, scroll to the end of that unit's portion of the railway, and click again. That's three mouse movements, three keystrokes, and three mouse clicks per unit. I tried to keep the workers in groups of three, although this was possible only about half the time. So it probably took me 600 clicks, keystrokes, and scrolls to build that railway.

Imagine if I'd been able to say that I wanted to build a railroad, click on its start, and click on its end. The computer would then have directed workers, as they became available, to work on sections of the railway. The entire railroad could have been constructed with the same amount of supervision that it took me to direct one worker.

Yeah, imagine that, it's called Civ4. You can direct one worker to build it, you can direct a dozen.

But again we go to TFA:
You may wonder why I'm talking about Civ III, when Civ IV has been out for months. I never bought Civ IV. I'd been waiting and hoping for a more playable Civ. What finally arrived was a Civ that takes just as many clicks, but with a new animated 3D UI.

Yeah...

In CIv4 you can automate most actions and take a hands-off approach and focus on the general direction of your empire. More and more I play my games by automating construction in my non-critical cities, I let workers build improvements automatically, I make choices as to what crucial structures will be built where, but the mundane, repetitive clicking can be mostly done away with.

Point is, the choice to make detail decisions is entirely yours. I don't think it's a UI problem when you choose to build dozens of cities, hundereds of units, and then micro-manage them all. Especially when the UI of the game in question (CIV III) is several years old. Imagine that, UIs evolve!

What's next, a 6 page article on powertoys for Windows 95 and why they don't increase productivity?

Re:Automation

[bateleur]

Whilst I mostly agree with your comments here, Civ 4 still encourages an awful lot of micromanagement if you're trying to beat the game's higher levels.

This is not necessarily bad, though. Some people like to micromanage for hours on end. It seems to me that Philip Goetz - despite writing six pages and appending weighty academic references at the end of his piece - is mostly just complaining that he doesn't like this particular style of game.

Civ != RTS

[beavis88]

Sorry. It's just not.

But, Civ 4 is a lot better than Civ 3 in terms of opportunites for less clicking and scrolling. I really don't see the point in bitching about the interface of a ~5 year old game...

Let's get something straight.

[Digitus1337]

Civilization is not a Real Time Strategy game, it is a 4X (eXplore, eXpand, eXploit and eXterminate) Turn Based Strategy game. Turn Based games like Civ do tend to have a lot more micro-management than RTS titles, but either does require quite a bit of mouse work. That said, is there any viable alternative?

Re:Let's get something straight.

[Anne_Nonymous]

>> Civilization... is a 4X (eXplore, eXpand, eXploit and eXterminate) Turn Based Strategy game

Actually, I think it's an eX-employee, eX-girlfriend, eX-hausted from no sleep, and eX-iled to the basement until you take a bath, Turn Based Strategy game.

Re:Let's get something straight.

[Rhys]

Yes. Work like you don't have to own a frikkin mouse.

The old civ 1 used the keyboard much better than most of the recent civs. Heck, you could play the whole game using only the keyboard, and I usually did. (it was faster than the mouse) Civs 3 and 4 have been particularly bad about not accepting movement chains -- say you're moving a tank with movement 3 along roads (so move cost = 1/3rd). 9 keypresses will use up your movement. In civ 1, if you knew where you wanted to go you could key in those keypresses as fast as you can type. The game would remember them and catch up later. In recent versions (3 and 4) if you press a key too soon, the game just eats the keypress. Yes yes, "go to" is the solution in that example, but given the spazz-outs that "go to" can produce on railroads in the older civs, I don't tend to trust it. (I've been learning to trust it again in 4)

This might be a UI decision to make it harder for idiots to screw up by spamming keys, but frankly it sucks. I also have that problem with the wait-at-end-of-turn (which I prefer, but I hate it missing my first "enter" because it is busy animating a unit). Sure, I could turn animations off, but in general that didn't seem to solve my problem. Decide I'm done with my only unit (early-game problem), hit space and enter rapidly and it misses it.

Also, the new build UI sucks in 4. For one thing, why in god's green earth are the reccomendations not marked when you zoom in to the city level? This has been obviously missing since the beginning and should be there by now. And why are there 3+ lines of things to build (units, city improvments, wonders) and only 2 lines visible at once?

Re:Let's get something straight.

[badasscat]

Turn Based games like Civ do tend to have a lot more micro-management than RTS titles, but either does require quite a bit of mouse work. That said, is there any viable alternative?

I don't think it's about alternatives, and I don't think there's anything wrong with Civ's interface.

I think the point is RTS games and turn-based games are fundamentally different. It's a pretty egregious mistake to call Civ an RTS and to say it has too many clicks on that basis, IMO, which makes the whole story here (or at least the headline and summary) basically moot.

Some RTS games may very well require too many clicks. The whole point is the action is happening in real-time, so you want to minimize your work load as much as possible. The interface needs to be streamlined so that you can get done what you need to do quickly.

Turn-based games, though, are under no such constraints, and in fact part of the reason people still play them is because you don't need to be in such a hurry and can play completely at your own pace.

The bottom line is they are two different genres that are often chosen by gamers for completely opposite reasons. Those who want action-oriented strategy buy RTS games; those who want more depth and planning buy turn-based games. It is a huge mistake to suggest that turn-based games need to be more like real-time games, which is in effect what's being suggested by lumping both genres in together. Both genres in fact exist to counterbalance each other.

I do remember playing the original Myth and feeling like I literally just didn't have enough time to deal with the interface before my guys got slaughtered. So this is a big concern in real RTS games. But using Civilization as an example of what's wrong with the RTS genre is just incorrect on many different levels.

I'll just give up RTS games and go play Diablo!

[KatchooNJ]

Ya know something... this article opened my eyes. Before I get carpal tunnel, I'm going to uninstall my RTS games and load back on Diablo! Weee!!

Click... click... click... click... click... click... click... click... click... click...

lol, 422 + 290 actions?

[aliquis]

lol!

422 mouse clicks is much?! Go watch the APM for say Grubby in WC3 or whatever korean in Starcraft and then come back and talk about the amount of actions. Thought their games really ARE RTS, isn't Civilization turn based?

Too many... what?

[LSD-OBS]

For a second there, I swear it said "too many chicks". There was a new tab opened to www.ebgames.com before I even had the chance to reparse!

Eating steak, too much chewing?

[cowscows]

Uhhh...are people buying the game and having fun? If so, then I think it's safe to say that the number of clicks is just fine.

If it's too many clicks for you personally, then maybe you should go play a different game. I know it's hard to believe, but you as an individual are not the intended market for every developer out there.

no wii for you

[dolson]

If you get exhausted just from moving your fingers to click and push buttons, then I think you aren't going to be too happy when you hear about the Nintendo Wii's control scheme. What America really needs is a gaming console that lets you control your games simply by chewing food and drinking soda.

Re:no wii for you

[sammy baby]

What America really needs is a gaming console that lets you control your games simply by chewing food and drinking soda.

Actually, I've played several games where the entire user interface is comprised of drinking beer. They belong to a genre usually referred to as "Drinking Games."

There's also a simplified version of the game, which can even be played solo, called "Drinking." Dedicated fans sometimes like to follow it up with a wind-down round of "Drunk-dialing the ex" or "Puking your guts out."

Re:no wii for you

[voice_of_all_reason]

There's also a simplified version of the game, which can even be played solo, called "Drinking."

Would you mind writing up a strategy guide for this one? I'm having a bit of trouble on level 6.

Re:no wii for you

[JonLatane]

Oh, and I forgot to mention: If you do decide to rescue a princess, make sure you keep your levels low, as trying this outcome at extremely high levels (level 13+ makes it impossible for my character) is impossible; your Tool Use and Maintenance scores decrease by about -10 each level, and word spreads among princesses if you don't do a good job saving them.

Civ != RTS

[batmn42]

Civ is a prime example of a game that is NOT real-time strategy. It is a turn-based strategy game.

Just FYI. I do agree that there are too many clicks in RTS games like Starcraft, Warcraft, and even Rise of Nations.

Not a strategy game if you don't control details!

[Dr. Spork]

But what the article fails to mention is that all those clicks and movements is exactly what makes that game fun. If you play Civ like me, you play against overwhelming odds (on Deity, the AI cheats terribly) and you proudly flaunt your human ingenuity exactly though applying your limited resources in the most optimal way possible on every level of detail. Figuring out how to efficiently transfer an army of railroad builders to another continent takes a lot of planning and clicking, but these sorts of projects inside the game is what makes it worth playing. I'd like to ask any complainers: where exactly do you see the fun in strategy games, if not in conceiving and executing elaborate and detailed strategies? What sort of a real player complains about the tedium of building an efficient railroad network for transporting troops and goods, when exactly such logistical advantages often mean the difference between victory and defeat?

What are the alternatives, then? Remove all that detail? Oh, I know: How about a big red button that says "apply your human ingenuity in the most optimal way possible". (It would be a big button.) That would certainly save you a lot of mouse clicks. Yeah, that may be what the next generation of strategy games will look like, but I'd rather play Civ.

How Not to Write a Thesis

[LargeWu]

Pick one data point. Make sure it's outdated and unrepresentative. Base it on subjective criteria.

Seriously the article could have been summarized like this:
"There's this one real-time strategy game, except it's a turn based game, and it requires too many clicks per turn once the game is sufficiently advanced. Except this problem was mitigated in the next version. Therefore, RTS games require too many clicks."

Reign of the twitch gamers...

[Beolach]

I used to consider RTS games to be among my top favorite genres, maybe even #1. But it's gotten to the point where they're ruled by the twitch gamers, just like FPS games (which have been among my least favorite genres). WC3 is the main RTS I play right now, and in normal games I really suck bad. So I tend to end up playing custom games, mostly Tower Defence maps.

The problem I have is that the RT is overruling the S - the Real Time nature of the game means that you don't have enough time to work on a long-term strategy, because you have to defend against immediate threats. But because multi-player is such an important feature to have in mass-market games, it's hard to do away with Real Time, because Turn Based Strategy games are more difficult to correctly implement multiplayer, not on a technical level, but on a "pleases most players" level - you don't want to allow one player to slow down the game for all the other players, but you don't want to rush anyone, either. Also, Turn Based Strategy seem to have this "obsolete/inferior" rap going against them compared with Real Time Strategy, which they really don't deserve.

I really liked how Majesty removed the twitch-gamer advantage, by removing the low-level control of individual units. I'd probably play Majesty more than WC3, except that WC3 is more popular with my friends.

Check out supreme commander

[imbaczek]

SupCom for all those Total Annihilation lovers, where you can issue orders and forget about the units doing them, because you know they'll get executed.

This game will remove the arcade out of RTS. Check out the trailer or the E3 presentation.

Re:Check out supreme commander

[PFI_Optix]

Another vote for Supreme Commander

From TFA: "The RTS user interface hasn't improved since Total Annihilation (1997), which had more useful unit automation than many current games. Meanwhile, the number of objects our computers can control and animate has increased, and continues to increase, exponentially. The old UI model isn't at the breaking point - it's broken."

Total Annihilation allowed you to automate most of the less exciting parts of an RTS.

Need repairs? Put a few construction or repair units on a patrol route through your base. They'll stop to repair any damaged buildings. Want a fighter screen around your base to deal with bombers? Set your airfield's rally point as a patrol route and queue up a few dozen fighters. Speaking of queue...construction queues are virtually unlimited. No more going back and selecting each building to queue up 5 or 9 or 12 units every couple of minutes. The same goes for building construction; they can be queued, so that your entire base is planned and you don't have to select your construction units for every new building.

If Supreme Commander lives up to its promise of being an heir to TA, it has already addressed much of the problems mentioned in TFA.

Re:Not a strategy game if you don't control detail

[Haeleth]

I'd like to ask any complainers: where exactly do you see the fun in strategy games, if not in conceiving and executing elaborate and detailed strategies? What sort of a real player complains about the tedium of building an efficient railroad network for transporting troops and goods, when exactly such logistical advantages often mean the difference between victory and defeat?

That's exactly the issue. Coming up with a strategy = fun. The question is, how high-level are your orders going to be?

If implementing your strategy involves moving individual workers and ships one square at a time, then I'm sorry, but no normal person will enjoy that. Even having "go there" orders doesn't necessarily help. In the old versions of Civ I used to play, you couldn't group units, so you couldn't just say "send these 25 workers to Athens and these 25 to Thermopylae", you had to issue 50 separate orders to units. That's not fun. It doesn't give you any more strategic options, it just makes you click a lot.

Similarly, in the versions of Civ I played, there were only two ways to build a railway. If you wanted a specific route, you had to build it manually: tell a worker to build a railway on the square it was on, wait for it to finish, move it to the next square, repeat. Alternatively, you could tell it to build a railway from where it was to some other place, but then you lost control of the route and it would build it somewhere stupid and take twice as long as it should have. What you couldn't do was tell a unit to go to a certain point, then from there build a railway via a specific route to some other point. So you either had to give up strategic control, or you had to click a lot.

Nobody's saying they want games dumbed down. They just want smoother interfaces that make it easier for you to tell the game what your strategy is and how you want it implemented, without forcing you to perform every single step yourself.

To be fair to the author...

[Flaming Babies]

...he didn't call Civilization III a RTS game.

His comment was:
Overclick isn't limited to Civilization. Real-time strategy games will leave you with even worse carpal tunnel.
There are no mentions in the rest of the article about Real-time.
It's just a poor title for the summary.