Real-Time Strategy is incredible and you should play it

I guess the real time strategy was the friends we made per minute.

My first RTS game was Age of Mythology but my first RTS game I played online was Company of Heroes. I got stomped so hard in my first online match that the guy messaged me afterwards and asked if I was new to the game. He then pulled me into a match vs AI and proceeded to show me the ropes about resource management, expansion, planning, everything really. He stomped me into the ground again after but I finally had a grasp on HOW to play. Probably would have bounced off online play if it wasn't for that guy. This video feels like what he did for me but for AoE IV, thank you, gonna try the series again

As someone who’s literally been playing RTS since early childhood and even played competitively at a semi-professional level, even I felt like I was learning more from this fundamental basics guide to RTS than from a lot of “beginner guides” that are actually about specific improvements for intermediate players. Also all the quotes and citations from other videos to supports your points felt really clean and well done and shows just how high effort this video really was so koodos to you for that. 11/10

THIS is the video EVERY RTS player should watch before trying to learn the genre. It is insane how I`ve played RTS games casually for years and never thought of them as having multitasking as their core. I am astonished by how a book review channel published a better "begginer's guide to playing RTS" than a several RTS dedicated channels. Thanks a lot for this. As a member of it, I feel like the RTS community really needed this. Thank you! Thank you!

Brilliant video! Fun fact: we intentionally kept the line of sight of the Scout in AoE4 considerably larger than AoE2, as well as starting the player with 3 sheep under the Town Center, precisely to help reduce the amount of multi-taking in the early game. On boarding is still an area of concern for PC, if you ever get the chance to try the Xbox version of the game let us know what you think about the large difference between the two experiences.

Your argument about multitasking just blew my mind. I played BroodWar (and some other RTSs) A LOT during my teenager years and never got good at it, even reserarching build orders, theory and etc. Since I could never understand why, I eventually got frustrated and started dedicating my gameplay time to other genres, thinking I never had the mechanical skills. Being a terrible multitasker and watching your video, I think I finally understand what kept holding me back. I'm willing to give RTS another go with AoE4

Who would have guessed that the very best introduction video to AoE4 would have been made by a book reviewer and not a AoE4 dedicated content creator. This video is simply amazing. Hands down the best introduction to RTS games I have ever seen. Thank you for this jewel, it will be my guide now for introducing my friends to my favorite game.

I think the "adaptive strategy" point is kind of an ultimatum for whether you'll like multiplayer RTS or not. A lot of players will want to play a certain way and when they realize they can't do that they'll stop playing. It's a similar problem to what Overwatch had. The game marketed itself as a game where you play a Hero that matches your playstyle, but when you actually start playing you realize it's actually better to focus on counterpicking your opponents, which soured a lot of people on the game.

T90, GiantGrantGames, Razbuten? This man is a legend and a man of culture. Still watching it rn but you referenced a lot more creators from the RTS scene. This is such a love letter to RTS

It's always super fun when someone makes a video WAY outside their channel's usual wheelhouse, because you just know they really, really care about whatever it is they're jumping to and that level of enthusiasm is infectious. And now I'm downloading Age of Mythology again lol Thanks for making a really digestible breakdown of the basics, this is a wonderful thing for any competitive community to have.

as someone who plays rts for 25 years I must say this is the first time I see these concepts laid out in front of me in such a coherent and visually appealing way. well made video!

21:20 My favorite moments in RTS games have been times where I win because I pulled off a distraction, faked a retreat to bait enemies, or threw my (on paper) less powerful army at a more powerful one only to come out on top because I had an ace up my sleeve. RTS games make you feel like Sun Tzu.

You have done it! You’ve created a true, beautiful guide for actual beginners. I can finally use this to indoctrinate the rest of my friends into RTS. We are so back gamers

Hey man this video rules, as a person who used to love RTS games as a kid but kinda fell off of them and fell victim to the whole APM fear stuff and all this made me download AoE 4 off Gamepass and I'm loving it. Thank you for this.

I too also became an AoE-pilled Khmer-cell late last year, and thankfully dodged the APM discussion entirely. Really the major wall for me was knowledge, learning systems, how systems interact, hidden stats underneath, stuff like that. Trying to get into starcraft 2 after didn't come with a problem with not being able to keep up with the actions someone else was making, it was knowing what the hell was going on. In that I don't think there needs to be any change to the systems, maybe just a change to the discussion (and definitely "content creation", I think T90's low elo legends series really kept me going with AoE - a good time that only asked you to know a little about the game to enjoy it)

I LOVE strategy. I think there are 3 things that limit my enjoyment with RTS the most: 1. the... multitasking 💀 yeah, so here's the thing - when I was deep into starcraft 2 for a while, it was pretty cool and I was doing alright but I've noticed it affected my life in a negative way - I've found it harder and harder to focus on just one thing, which is kind of important when my job is programming, you know? is that what ADHD feels like - always multitasking when you don't want to? and yeah, once I stopped playing SC2, my focus-on-one-thing recovered pretty fast, thankfully, but now I'm wary to try games that demand high levels of multitasking :/ an another angle is that the UI makes you constantly look in the minimap corner - this also affected my life and I couldn't just look at one spot without jumping my eyes back and forth sometimes, especially when I felt like I was expressing my skill in some way (is it weird for these RTS things to transfer to other areas of life so easily? idk!) 2. no follow-up after a match ends somebody beating me on the ladder with a well-executed timing attack is no problem, I'm just going to learn from that and, hey, I've noticed my opponent is not so great at scouting, so I should probably exploit their weakness next ga... wait, that's it - I'm never seeing this opponent ever again? AoE is much better in this regard in that it actually suggests rematching but 90% of other RTSes mainly have 1v1 matchmaking that then boots you back to the lobby/menu after the game ends, often also depriving you of the ability to chat - WHY? I want to play against players who I can feel are people - how am I supposed to do that in 5 minutes? which leads me to 3. social aspect what's the point of multiplayer if you don't feel like you're playing against a player? this manifests in 2 ways: players who drill 1 "strategy" and either execute it perfectly and win or get countered or matched fairly and lose because they have no other tricks - this is mostly a problem because of my previous point, IMO, and this is the reason why I dislike it - it's like I'm playing a build order and not a real person; the other way is that RTS involves a lot of actions that hardly affect your opponent and are just a baseline - like controlling you workers. If I wanted to learn to manage workers optimally, I would play singleplayer, what I want is strategy, so it's very odd that this management mini-game is present. AoE is especially awful with this because you'll scout your opponent at like 2-3 minutes in at the earliest and then actual interaction will start only ~5 minutes in, at least, so that's 5 minutes of mostly singleplayer in every single match - why? I'd love to just skip to the good parts that involve strategy tangent: fighting games have similar concepts and they not only fix these "problems" but actually excel at them, which is great I believe I've tried ALL the RTSes that were shown in the video except Beyond All Reason and 1 other game of that style (Supreme Commander, maybe?); my absolute favourites are Offworld Trading Company and Tooth and Tail (both were shown!) and they totally excel at being strategy games first, management/multitasking later ...problem is, they don't have many players so it's hard to get a 1v1 going and Offworld Trading Company is best at 4 player free-for-all, which... means I've only played OTC once this year :/ still, I've found online friends in communities for those games and it's possible - Tooth and Tail has a tournament with all levels of skill going on right now! now, about the point of recruiting my best friends to RTS - yeaaaaaah, welllllll... a lot of other problems exist here and RTS is really quite a time sink, so I'm not even sure if I want to throw that onto my friends... but if I did, everyone has already played some RTS and has their favourite - I love Tooth and Tail, my friend likes AoE2, my other friend likes Supreme Commander, my third friend will only play Warcraft 3 custom maps instead of the regular skirmishes and the list goes on... no idea how to get over this hurdle and actually play RTS together - so we mostly end up playing shooters and party games together on rotation and RTS doesn't make the cut :P

To any of my regular viewers, this style change is most likely temporary and I’ll get back to my usual schtick in my next video

Great video. I absolutely fall into the camp of people scared away from the genre after experiencing that feeling of being thrown into the deep end without knowing how to swim. I feel like I finally got some swimming lessons here! Well done!

Finally, an actual good beginner guide to RTS, great job!

This makes total sense, I played a lot of RTS (Warcraft 1, AOE, etc) but multitasking was never my strong suit so I switched to Dota as soon as it appeared because it was easier to just focus on one hero instead of a whole faction. Also the teamplay aspect of Dota was really cool since a cohesive team of mediocre players was far better than dispersed team of good players.