EPTShould offensive tower rushing be viable in RTS games?
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TL.net Bot
TL.net134 Posts
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Yurie
12046 Posts
Personal opinion. Only having long games every time lessens variation and surprise, critical things for long term enjoyment. Most people are not the ones that like fine tuning one build for 3 months. | ||
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seopthi
393 Posts
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Latham
9568 Posts
Tower rushing in AoE2 requires quite the big investment and is risky, both economically and militarily. Even if someone tower rushes your gold/stone, you always have a second set to fall back on, which they'll need to tower as well. You can also rush the tower with a few workers because towers can't shoot under themselves where melee units attack range is. Games would be very boring without tower rushes, all-ins and other such tactics. I know it feels shitty to get tower rushed when you wanted to train your macro on a player opponent, but that is more of the case of being forced on the backfoot, into a reactionary playstyle, rather than just getting "cheesed" by someone. Win/Loss rate doesn't matter, the only true loss is if you react emotionally and haven't learnt anything from your loss. | ||
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MJG
United Kingdom1401 Posts
Yes. | ||
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Manit0u
Poland17682 Posts
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RogerChillingworth
Chad3119 Posts
I think RTS could adopt a similar pacing, where the early game is for small advantages, poking, dueling—slowly setting the stage as the intensity builds. It's logical, too, that as power levels increase so would the stakes. If the goal is to make the most fun game, then I think this is it. Casuals can breathe a bit and pros can lean on strong mechanics to get small edges or, at times, win straight up (but very rarely). Generically speaking, I've never been a fan of really cheesy all-ins early game, in any game. The argument tends to be that it keeps greed in check, but that's only because we've designed RTS in the same fashion for 30 years. | ||
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WombaT
Northern Ireland26307 Posts
If it becomes a stock thing you can do that’s way harder to stop than execute, it’s not super fun for me. Still have traumatising flashbacks of close spawn vHu back in the day on Turtle Rock in Warcraft 3 haha! | ||
BisuDagger
Bisutopia19307 Posts
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Agh
United States1038 Posts
As long as there is counter play it's fine, and the default game state assuming both players are equal and have not made any mistakes should be neutral at best for the attacker. If cannon rushing was something that always let you automatically come out even or ahead then it's bad for the game. (see graph for player count post window mines for an example of the long term effect this can have) For Starcraft 2 specifically, much worse things have plagued the game than cannon rushes. Thankfully most have been fixed or either addressed in some fashion, but still existed for longer than they should have. Off the top of my head: Building bunkers from inside of bunkers and offensive low ground wall offs were the absolute most game breaking. (Different category but honorable mention to queens and roaches not having enough range to even fight back vs hellions or reapers). I still would have put starting workers @ 10 and kept the increased town hall supply but I like that sc2's starting economy naturally omits most cheeses. I think the only thing really left that results in degenerate game state are the hybrid cannon/gateway rushes in PvZ if the map favors it. | ||
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Manit0u
Poland17682 Posts
On November 14 2025 00:56 BisuDagger wrote: Tower rushing should have huge risks. However, I think an rts that has viable tower based offense could be really cool. It would have to be very creative, not just sending workers to build stuff. Take for instance if the warp prism could warp in finished cannons from another location on the map. Or if towers could be converted to castle siege towers and pushed across the map in an AoE style game. I think so far WC3 did it the best. You had different tower rushing strategies, not all races could do them and it depended on the matchup and then you had a ton of variety there too. From all-in early rushes, to delayed tower push supporting your main army targeting very specific and strict timings in the opponent's build etc. 99% of the time tower rushing is a kind of gimmicky pocket strategy that can catch your opponent off guard but it still requires a lot of skill, experience and game knowledge to execute properly and is entertaining for both sides. There was I think one time where Undead tower rushing Orcs or Humans was THE meta play but like with most meta stuff people eventually figured it out and it was phased out (but still remains as a viable strategy if you can catch your enemy unawares). | ||
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yeti
United States259 Posts
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RogerChillingworth
Chad3119 Posts
On November 16 2025 07:26 yeti wrote: Even if canon rushing isn't done often in BW pro matches, I think the threat of it existing is important both to balance matchups and keep player's BO honest. To borrow a chess term, "Often the threat is more powerful than the move." The OP is worded poorly, like the political compass tests that ask loaded questions that you then 'agree' or 'disagree' with. For this, I feel it's pushing the premise that tower rushing is inherent in RTS. It's more interesting to think about how far we can get away from StarCraft and stop thinking so small. People play the same old hits—blue minerals, guy with gun, barracks-factory-starport—and never truly innovate. Like not even a little. What would a RTS that is better than StarCraft look like that has no tower rushing at all? No towers, even. How can a RTS be 5x more fun to play than StarCraft? To me, these are the questions. Because the validity of tower rushing just brings out the same old answers, because why wouldn't it? People only think about StarCraft and its derivatives. | ||
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ETisME
12685 Posts
Though it just be quite difficult to nail the balance, very dirty and limits map design. | ||
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Intelligence13
Canada19 Posts
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OSCEWiNtER
Hungary20 Posts
It's a lot stronger in Starcraft 2 in my opinion, which I dislike a lot | ||
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ThunderJunk
United States726 Posts
Sometimes there are cool niche situations where you can build static defenses under the enemy's nose and deny an important area of the map, like a geothermal vent - so you're effectively tower cheesing in the midgame. And one of the endgame win conditions is to build a giant long-range artillery cannon - but that's really more of a "Win More" option. __ Having a commander in the early game makes it a lot harder to completely lose immediately to aggression with no follow-up. | ||
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Readmangacc
United States1 Post
For me, the best RTS design keeps early pressure possible but not auto-win, and uses it to create mind games instead of coin flips. And yeah, RTS can definitely explore more creative early-aggression tools than “worker builds tower,” but the threat itself is important to keep things interesting. | ||
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stenole
Norway869 Posts
More "modern" RTS games seem to struggle with cheese elements because mechanical execution plays a smaller part. It becomes a purely a build order vs build order situation where one person wins or loses where the only thing that can change anything is is one person is lacking game knowledge. It's a blind strategy win just like winning a round of rock-paper-scissors. Good developers will naturally make the changes to the game needed for these kinds of interactions not to happen, for example removing tower rushes. The game's inability to support it should signal a problem though. An RTS that is all about decisions is really just a pure strategy game. | ||
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XenOsky
Chile2321 Posts
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ThunderJunk
United States726 Posts
On November 25 2025 02:59 stenole wrote: "Should" is a very restrictive word that implies a dogmatic view of the genre. I think in general it seems like people have a very constrained view of what an RTS is or isn't. I think for BW specifically, tower rushes have enriched the game. It means that no matter how mapped out the game is, players can't be fully complacent and autopilot the early game. More "modern" RTS games seem to struggle with cheese elements because mechanical execution plays a smaller part. It becomes a purely a build order vs build order situation where one person wins or loses where the only thing that can change anything is is one person is lacking game knowledge. It's a blind strategy win just like winning a round of rock-paper-scissors. Good developers will naturally make the changes to the game needed for these kinds of interactions not to happen, for example removing tower rushes. The game's inability to support it should signal a problem though. An RTS that is all about decisions is really just a pure strategy game. To be fair, scouting with your worker is a distinctly "Blizzard" design element. If you think about it, it's not necessarily intuitive that a unit whose primary function is mining and building would have some of the faster movement speed in the game. In any game where this isn't the case, where workers/constructors move more slowly than military units, you proportionally nerf tower rushing. Also, the degree to which buildings and resource collection are dispersed across wider swaths of the map also affects viability of tower rushing. Does designing away from tower rushing necessarily neuter early aggression? Not at all. It's just that in Blizzard games bases are distinctly built around highly concentrated resource distributions and builders move quickly. That definitely doesn't imply that any game that doesn't include tower rushing is less mechanically rewarding. | ||
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BronzeKnee
United States5219 Posts
So, as someone who has done more than their fair share of cannon rushing, the answer should be no. It really speaks to poor overall design that it happened to begin with and was unintended, and it is unintuitive. It's not hard to design away from tower rushing. There are much better ways to get variety in gameplay than having people do things in an unintuitive fashion. | ||
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Harris1st
Germany7096 Posts
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Manit0u
Poland17682 Posts
On December 01 2025 20:03 Harris1st wrote: I think tower rushing is a fun element and does for entertaining games. So yes. On that topic: | ||
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