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Real Time Strategy Links |
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APOLYTON |
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A huge, well established
and mature strategy portal that covers epic strategy games, especially the
Civilization series and other turn based titles. Its a gold mine of information
covering everything from the current Civilization
4, Galactic
Civilizations II, Masters
of Orion III and Rise
of Nations. |
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The
Battlefield |
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The
Battlefield is an online tournament site for strategy games, especially
serious turn based or empire building strategy games. Their list of supported
titles include Masters
of Orion III, Civilization
IV, Age
of Wonders, Desert
Rats vs Afrika Corps, and Rise
of Nations. |
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Established early 2002, Gamecatcher.net
is a sizable and lively strategy site that hosts occasional gaming events
and published articles and reviews via its own monthly online magazine.
Most of its enthusiasm centres around Civilization and SimCity but it also
hosts the odd StarCraft tournament. |
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Heaven
Games is THE place to go for anything to do with any game that
is historical and strategic: i.e. the Age
of Empires series, Cossacks,
Rise of Nations, Stronghold,
Caesar III and Pharaoh
and the odd fantasy game, like Dungeon
Siege and Star
Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds. Its excellent! |
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Mr
Fixit Online
(MFO) |
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This is network of game forums make
to help gamers expand their skills with info, resources and discussion for
their favourite games, mostly RTS ones. Games covered are Age
of Kings, Counter-Strike, Diablo
II, Empire Earth, Majesty,
Red Alert II, Rise
of Nations and Force CMD. |
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RTS
Starter Kit |
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 This
is a tool produced by independent developer Garage
Games, using the Torque engine. Garage used
to be known as Sierra/Dynamix, and the Torque engine
was once known as a rather cool FPS game called Tribes.
Simply put, its a Do-It-Yourself RTS game development system in a 3D environment,
available in Mac, Linux and Windows environments, and offering an "Indie"
or "Commercial" licenses. |
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Shambler.net |
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This was formerly Zileas.com.
Zileas was #1 on the StarCraft
tournaments in its very early years and a writer of StarCraft strategy
articles that caused a wee bit of a stir over "old school" and "new
school" styles of gameplay in that game. He eventually landed a job
at a games firm and has opted out of his web site over a perceived conflict
of interest. Shambler.net is a generic games site
focusing mainly on strategy games, in particular Blizzard
ones. The articles here are generally intelligent and well thought out.
Or were - this site is long gone, now. |
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Strategy
Gaming Online caters for the more serious strategist for a number of
different games. These equally serious people who keep up with current industry
news and the latest on games: i.e. release dates, betas, etc. There are
maps, patches, cheats, screenshots and updating release dates for a number
of titles. This site is part of the UGO
Network and acts as a host for a number of other strategy sites. |
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Strategy
Planet is part of a constellation of "Planet" sites orbiting the GameSpy
Network, each dedicated to a different game genre and divided up into
game specific sites that qualify as major fan sites in themselves.
There's a lot to peruse. Its all part of the Gamespy Network, famous for
its online gaming and some of the most abysmal online comics found on Planet
Earth. |
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General Gaming Links |
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AusGamers |
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An excellent
first port of call for local (i.e. Australian) game related news, demos,
trailers, files and other assorted resources for all gaming Antipodean's. AusGamers conducts
nationwide Australian gaming LAN events involving thousands of players,
and it also mirrors many new
files and downloads found elsewhere. AusGamers
is a grassroots thing, mostly volunteers, and includes several thousand
hosted sites from clans to youth media. |
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Bella
Online is an all purpose Women's' site with everything from gardening,
beauty, cooking, politics, pregnancies, health, sports, travel and
of
course, computer strategy and action gaming. This section covers everything
from mission walkthrough, reviews and how to cope with being a computer
widow. Hm, their Games Editor has mutated into a Low Carb Editor. |
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Dot
Eaters, The |
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One of the
best computer game history sites on the web. Retrace the first steps of
the creation of a whole new medium, from a sideways tennis game on an
oscilloscope in 1958, through to Space War on a PDP-1
mainframe in 1962, right through the original 70's console boom and bust,
to stop around 1984 with the fledgling home computer market. Work still
continues on this archaeological gaming dig. Every page links to external
sources where you can chase up the subject in more detail. Its brilliant! |
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Games
Domain
US
UK |
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A simply laid
out, easy to use, uncluttered and relatively plain web site that
keeps a huge and extensive alphabetic and date sorted library of game
news, reviews, previews and features that dates all the way back to 1996.
I like this purely because you can find things in a hurry without having
to negotiate a minefield of popup's and hyper-intrusive ads. I don't know
about you, but I usually just abandon any site without reading it instead
of chasing some idiot's idea of innovative advertising around the screen
like a runaway cockroach. |
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Gamepower.com.au
is another local all purpose games site. Not to be confused with just
plain old Gamepower.com,
who has long since shut down. This is like a much smaller version
of GameSpy,
without the endless demands for registration and the heavy albatross
of
commercialism. |
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US UK AUS |
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GameSpot
is your typically comprehensive game news
and resource site with news, info, strategies, cheats, downloads and
articles
of all thing computer game related, for all platforms. Old and ancient
material seems unaffected by this new regime as well. Check out their
Guides for StarCraft:
Brood War, Total
Annihilation, Homeworld
2,
and Cataclysm.
You can just bypass a lot of clutter and jump straight to their full
PC Games List. As a historical resource its actually very good.
See also MobyGames. |
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GameSpy |
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This is a popup
and advertising billboard site, demonstrating how sophisticated and intrusive
advertising, spamming and data mining can be these days. No, wait a minute
- I think there's a large network of game sites in there somewhere too.
Ah yes, there it is: Gamespy. Insanely commercial,
and home to innumerable Planet~ game sites, such as the excellent StrategyPlanet.
Many games now only offer internet gaming via GameSpy;
so provided it doesn't fold these games should have some longevity. Its
huge file hosting site is the infamous FilePlanet,
which without doubt, epitomises all that has gone wrong with
the Internet. Unless, of course, you're a big fan of awkward, confusing
procedures that generate huge numbers of windows and ads and demands all
your personal details as often as it can just to download one file. My
advice: FilePlanet is the download site of last
resort for the truly desperate. And keep Ad-Aware
handy. I just don't trust it. Seek other download mirrors, preferably
run by human beings, if you can. Aussie gamers will find many of its files
mirrored at AusGamers. |
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The Home
of the Underdogs is similar to the games database MobyGames,
except this non-profit database is dedicated exclusively to underrated
computer games. Games, that, for whatever reason, never got a good
run when they first appeared. Maybe it was a botched marketing attempt,
or it was ahead of its time, or perhaps it was just bad luck, or maybe its
just abandonware from some small publisher that can't afford to
keep it - the Underdogs finally gives them their
place in the sun! This database includes a wide selection of titles, even
old educational and long dead software applications. There are forums, reviews,
polls, a Want List (got some old games to donate?), even old
manuals in .pdf format available! Highly, highly recommended! |
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IGN
(PC) |
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The IGN
network is another vast commercial enterprise in the same vein as
Gamespy or Gamespot.
They're all starting to look and sound very similar these days - and IGN
insists that you register and login. Still, like its contemporaries, its
a good start for a quick news browse or file download. |
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This is an
ambitious computer games database. Their aim
is to carefully catalogue all types of games and then make the results
publicly available across the Internet. You can browse by title, genre,
computer platform, or developer - even including platforms and publishers
long since passed away.
There's a huge list of contributors, so the site has as much
info
on freshly
released
titles
as
it
does to items
harking all the way
back to the Seventies. MobyGames
covers a huge amount of ground, and its presentation plain and wonderfully
unobtrusive: everything you'd want an online reference to be! See also:
Home of the Underdogs. |
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Strategy
Informer |
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A huge mega site devoted to a huge
barrage of PC and console games across a wide range of genres: news, reviews,
previews, downloads, game guides, and all other kinds of info can be found
here. SI has definitely grown into a monster over the years, with a glossy
interface very much like GameSpot's. |
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Modding Links (non-RTS to RTS) |
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Battlefield
40K: A
total conversion that transforms EA
Games' First Person Shooter Battlefield
1942 into the Warhammer
40,000 universe. You get to play either the Space
Marines and Imperial Guard versus the
skeletal Necrons and the ancient, high-tech Eldar.
There's nothing to see yet, but this mod looks detailed and accurate. Also: modDATABASE entry. |
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Battlehammer
40K |
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Another total conversion, this time converting EA
Games' Battlefield
2 into the Warhammer 40,000 universe. At present there are no downloads
and only a few choice images of untextured models of units, armour
and vehicles.
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Empires
Mod |
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An RTS styled
custom modification for EA
Games' expansive, team based multiplayer World War II game, Battlefield
1942. The Empires Mod applies many basic
Real Time Strategy features to this otherwise straight forward First Person
Shooter. Its sides are non-specific and your team is made up with the
usual multi-role cast of characters. Team members basically play the part
of the units themselves. Buildings can be constructed or destroyed, there's
a simple economy with a basic build tree (soon to have its own researchable
techs, apparently), and there's a Commander to direct things for the side
like an RTS player. |
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moddatabase (moddb) is
a large modding database for a huge range of PC games of all genres. It
includes some hosted mods, top100 lists,
forums,
and an up to date database for about 165 mods and total conversions!
You get descriptions, downloads and progress meters. Its all very convenient. |
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Natural
Selection is a custom mod for Half-Life
that changes the famous first person shooter into something that closely
resembles a proper RTS. The big difference of course, is that the players
are the units! Natural Selection pits
slimy monsters against armoured Space Marines in a StarCraftian
themed Team
Fortress like game, but with lots of extras. You have to build and
maintain an HQ, collect resources around the map, defend expansions, mutate
or upgrade through levels... Its all pretty impressive and worth having
a look. Playing the weird creatures can take a bit of getting used to. |
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RTS Glossary
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