I currently have:
Sins Of A Solar Empire

Downloading:
Star Wars:Empire At War
Warhammer 40,000:Dawn Of War Soulstorm

Just wanted to know of any other good ones I should get.

Thumbs up on DOW: Soulstorm, but you should get the complete set.

Other then that... I guess StarCraft or Supreme Commander.

company of heroes and coh: opposing forces, fallout 1 & 2, medieval total war 1 and 2, rome: total war, command and conquer red alert 2, world in conflict, blitzrieg, jagged alliance 2. this list will get you started and then some....

I'd personally suggest all of Dawn of War except for Soulstorm. It's easily the weakest expansion of the lot.

Warcraft 3 is still pretty good a worth a look as is Company of Heroes.

the DAWN of WAR series is top notch i haven't played soulstorm but the other 2 expansion packs were really well balanced and a shit load of fun to play online

Any of the Total War games are great. Rome is my favourite because it runs well even on lesser machines and the setting is great. The Total War games don't have a story in the sense that many games do. Warcraft III and Age of Empires III really have specific stories, and very specific battle lay-outs that lead you along the way. Total War lets you decide where you concentrate your troops and what cities you'll attack and when. Plus, tatics count a lot more than numbers.

Universe at War I enjoy (rts fans dont hit me plz), any of the Age of Empires games and if you can find a copy Empire Earth 1 (not 2 or 3!)

Rise of Nations. It is the Alpha and Omega of RTS.

Go and buy Starcraft. Don't download it, BUY IT!

Also Company of Heroes.

Perimeter is awesome if you're looking for something a wee bit different from your strategy games. Much more interesting than traditional build base, mine resource, blow shit out of the enemy. I hear Age Of Legends is meant to be very good as well.

Starcraft all the way, and you already have EaW (don't get Forces of Corruption, it's not that good)

Homeworld 2. It's a bit complex, so download the demo before buying it. (If you can find it. :/ )

Since I'm a Blizzard fanboy, I'd recommend StarCraft, for its sheer awesomeness factor, and WarCraft III, because of the versatility of the World Editor and the number of custom maps already on the market.

I hope by downloading you mean through digital distribution...

Anyways, other good ones are Company of Heroes, Starcraft, Supreme Commander, etc.

dawn of war

because you cannot turtle against a competent foe, its dynamic, fast and with a slew of different races and different play styles you can field a range of different strategies and ploys, because you use squads not individual units you can command a coherent battlefield and you need to to play well, its a game unforgiving to the slow however, and you need to attack to win, a turtle may foil a bot, but not a human with decent experience.

that said, its also beautiful like a gold plated cheerleader in lingerie.

ok, scrap the gold plating... and the lingerie.

awesome

P.S: each race must be played differently also, which makes for interesting team matches.

Company of Heroes is defenitly one you should try out, as is Dawn of War.

Age of empires 2 is old, but its great gameplay more than makes up for it.

Other than that, i don't know, Stronghold Crusader was great for me, but maybe thats an accuired taste, you could also try out Starcraft.

Starcraft is a must! Command and Conquer 3 is also a wonderful game. The new expansion came out as well, and it just made it better.

Starcraft II Is coming out soon I hope. Blizzard needs to stop paying so much attention to WoW and get on the better of the two.

I would suggest either Command and Conquer: Tiberium Sun, Command and Conquer: Red Alert 2, Age of Empires 2: Age of Kings (And the expansion because then you don't get the kickass Teutons).

In fact, I'd recommend any other CnC game (Except for Renegades since that isn't an RTS) and any of the Total War games too.

Depends:

Do you like C&C style - gather - build - fight = SupCom Forged Alliance

DoW style - hold control points - build - fight = Company of Heroes (or DoW)

Ground Control Spent points and instantly deploy - Fight = World in Conflict (i would go for this one best RTS i've played in YEARS)

Strategic Total War style - Strategy Map - Fight battles with forces in the area (I prefer Shogun for its purity but Medieval 2 is supposed to be good).

Maybe Warcraft 3 if you like WoW. If you don't like building stuff then you should get Warhammer Mark of Chaos. Or if you have an Xbox and don't like building stuff get Kingdom Under Fire Crusaders/Heroes.

The one good console RTS.

Dawn of War, yes, good choice.

Warcraft 3 is good even if you don't like WoW as they're different games, all they share is the setting really.

If you don't mind some turn based segments the Total War series is brilliant, the real time battles are easily the best, most atmospheric battles I've had in a strategy game. Nothing beats playing a small force of crusaders fighting desperately at a ford to prevent the mongol hordes burning antioch. Med 2 has some AI flaws (specifically in sieges) but is still better than most games on the market right now imo.

Major disagreement here with two of the above posters.

I played "Rome: Total War" and hated it. The control system is crap, the sound is generic, the graphics are rubbish (yes, you get a lot of people on screen at once, but they're all identical and still look like walking scarecrows) and I still haven't worked out how to save a practice game yet (why the f--k is the "Save" button greyed out, no matter where you are or what you're doing?) Of course there's no chance in hell of me ever actually playing a non-practice game since there's NO FREAKING PAPER MANUAL IN THE BOX (Hello! When will game developers learn that if it needs more than two buttons to play, a manual is probably a good idea?), the "help" section is about as much use as a chocolate teapot, the .pdf that comes with it is only any use in live play unless you can actually print the 40+ pages out otherwise you have to turn the game off to look at it and I CAN'T F--KING SAVE A GAME IN ORDER TO DO THAT (the only instruction the "manual" gives to do that is to use the "save" button which is greyed out. No explanation of why this is or how you get it back. Useless.) I tried to play this game for about four hours, which was enough for me. It's gone into the "screw you" cupboard and probably won't be coming out unless a charity shop is desperate for games.

So in short - avoid "Rome: Total War" like the plague, unless you can find a version with a paper manual - although being told about all the flaws in the control system won't help to fix the damn thing. It's a complete and utter waste of money.

Rome Total War is amazing. I've played it through twice. Medieval II Total War is also awesome. I'd like to disagree with the above post - I received paper manuals for both. Keep in mind that both are challenging, and not for the faint of heart, but they deliver an immensely satisfying experience when you successfully pull a victory out of an out-manned situation with your superior tactics. I can't recommend these games enough. Rome Total War is probably a little easier than Medieval II, and Medieval II is a little bit more involved, and requires a heft computer to run, but neither will disappoint you.

TheMadDoctorsCat, give games more time to games - it's an insult to the developers to not even play them when you buy them. I never experienced any of your difficulties, and I started playing these games when I was 16.

Anyway, if commanding thousands at a time is not for you, and if you prefer the AOE methods, I understand that Age of Mythology is recommended, and I personally enjoyed Battle for Middle Earth II, but I found the elvish archers to be a little broken.

I assume The Cat is playing the budget release, which like all budget games now only has a pdf manual on the disc.

I'm fairly certain the tutorials should pretty much tell you everything you need to know about how to play Rome Total War, I don't recall ever looking at the manual.

That said, can you not alt-tab to the pdf file?

I remember my gold edition of RTW came with a suprebly thick manuel, which I only needed to refer to after the fifth campaign game.

Ignore the cat- he is clearly mad. His complaints bemuse me- all RTS games have identical units, and the control system is fairly standard to all RTS games.

Also- you can murder people with elephants. ELEPHANTS.

In short- an excellent game

TheMadDoctorsCat:
Major disagreement here with two of the above posters.

I played "Rome: Total War" and hated it. The control system is crap, the sound is generic, the graphics are rubbish

Its not a new game and the control system / graphics was the same as Medieval and Shogun.

OK valid point when you say units were identical but when it was released it was already causing problems with most systems due to requirements. Could you imagine what would happen if every model was given its own personality?

Oh and I will add for future reference - graphics do not make a game.

I never had a problem with the control system in total war, its a pretty easy "click to select, click to move here" alot of the time. Yes that's over-simplification but it's really not that more complicated. And as someone who got a release version of every total war game since med 1 and a budget of Shogun, the manuals come in paper and are useful, if you get the games when theyre not 2-3 years old. Yes Rome does look a bit like attack of the clones, but when I got it it caused my old computer to die from the amount of troops I tried to fit on one map.

It takes real-time strategic thinking to outsmart the Combine in Half Life 2.

windfish:
Rome Total War is amazing. I've played it through twice. Medieval II Total War is also awesome. I'd like to disagree with the above post - I received paper manuals for both. Keep in mind that both are challenging, and not for the faint of heart, but they deliver an immensely satisfying experience when you successfully pull a victory out of an out-manned situation with your superior tactics. I can't recommend these games enough. Rome Total War is probably a little easier than Medieval II, and Medieval II is a little bit more involved, and requires a heft computer to run, but neither will disappoint you.

TheMadDoctorsCat, give games more time to games - it's an insult to the developers to not even play them when you buy them. I never experienced any of your difficulties, and I started playing these games when I was 16.

Anyway, if commanding thousands at a time is not for you, and if you prefer the AOE methods, I understand that Age of Mythology is recommended, and I personally enjoyed Battle for Middle Earth II, but I found the elvish archers to be a little broken.

And that's what you call a difference in opinion. :)

In all fairness, if a game takes four hours just to learn the basics, it's a bad game. I've played many RTS games, from the original Warcraft onwards, and I can't remember another one that I just could not "get into" to the extent of this one. Maybe it's different with a manual, but I think I gave it more than its fair chance and it just did nothing for me except leave me feeling frustrated at the control system.

And to give a comparison here - I've been scathing about certain points about both Bioshock and Oblivion, but I still think they're both good games in many respects. Clearly huge effort went into them, and to a certain extent it's paid off, although neither is perfect. I'd certainly recommend Bioshock to any fan of FPSs and Oblivion to any fan of RPGs despite their faults. I couldn't recommend this to anybody. Obviously others have bought and enjoyed it, so I guess it comes down to whose opinion you agree with the most.

I was about to say don't buy Rome, it gets boring, but then I remembered just how much I played that game before it got boring. I still never finished a campaign though, so unless you have a lot of time on your hands don't expect to finish it.
Having never played Starcraft (I'm not really sure why, I just don't want to buy it now that SC2 is coming out) I'd say Warcraft3 is my favourite RTS. The units/buildings aren't baffling like I think they often are (I'm just too dumb to know what the hell to build on Total Annihilation and things like that) and it has big longevity and sweet, sweet cinematics.

nightfish:

TheMadDoctorsCat:
Major disagreement here with two of the above posters.

I played "Rome: Total War" and hated it. The control system is crap, the sound is generic, the graphics are rubbish

Its not a new game and the control system / graphics was the same as Medieval and Shogun.

OK valid point when you say units were identical but when it was released it was already causing problems with most systems due to requirements. Could you imagine what would happen if every model was given its own personality?

Oh and I will add for future reference - graphics do not make a game.

I agree, if they did Bioshock would be the best FPS ever released. The graphics and sound weren't my major problems with "Rome" (although I don't think they did it any favors - there was nothing particularly wrong with the sound, I just found it generic to the point of boredom, and I think there's lots they could have done to improve the graphics without putting extra strain on graphics cards.) I found the camera / unit controls especially irritating. Again, that's my opinion.

But in the end, I think my major problem with this was the presentation. I just can't understand why a game patiently explains the controls one button at a time, at some length, using a bubble in the corner of the screen. That's utterly unique as far as I know, and with good reason. Haven't the designers ever played a videogame before? Haven't they seen how this kind of thing is done? Alt-tab doesn't work when the game itself uses the "tab" key; there's probably a way of getting it to work in window mode but I haven't found it. And the .pdf manual isn't much better than the help system (although it does at least show you multiple controls on a single page).

I've never played a "Total War" game before. (In case you haven't guessed, I also have no plans to play another.) I don't want to spend half an hour flicking through the idiotic help system to work out the controls, when the same information is given in one or two full-size screens on every single game I've ever played otherwise, without any exceptions that I can think of, and including "Oblivion", "Bioshock", various other RTS games, and many more which are completely modern and which come with paper manuals (this one didn't). I don't want to spend hours trying to work out kinks in the control system. Nor do I want to spend that time working out if I'm doing something wrong or if the camera is supposed to stop in midair, etc. I don't want to play for an hour or so in a practice session and have no way to save the game so that I can go onto the next part. Nor do I like feeling like a total idiot because the manual is telling me to do something which is completely impossible because the button to do it with is greyed out. I don't know, or particularly care any more, if I was doing anything wrong. I probably was, but if it takes four hours to work out what you're doing wrong in a game then it really isn't likely to be you, it's a badly designed game!

What's particularly irritating is that given the praise heaped on it here, there's probably ways to fix pretty much everything I've found wrong with this game. It sounds like an awesome game! But having spent literally hours trying to do so and failing miserably on my own, I simply can't be bothered to try any more.

Bottom line is: 1) include a paper manual with games like this, and 2) if there's such an obvious elephant-in-the-room type feature as a save button that won't work at a particular time - explain when, why, and what the heck the player can do to make it work!

Blandotaco:
Thumbs up on DOW: Soulstorm, but you should get the complete set.

Other then that... I guess StarCraft or Supreme Commander.

This man has the right idea, although honorable mention to Warcraft 3 and old-school Age of Empires, everything except for the graphics has aged superbly.

FTR, since I've been so negative about one particular game here, I'd have to say the best RTS game I've ever played is Warcraft 3. But it's obviously quite old now, and I'm not sure if it would work on a Vista machine. (Warcraft 2 certainly doesn't, at least not without some serious tweaking.)

No one suggested Defcon yet? Alright, I will. Get defcon if you don't mind minimalistic, almost exclusively multiplayer RTSes.

I would agree on the point of Warcraft three being a decent game, though I found its battle too small-scale for my liking.

An honourable mention here goes to cossacks: european wars. If you want to kill vast numbers of hapless infantry through strategy, tactics and resource warring, cossacks is your game.

And Sudden Strike- old, but an excellent game nonetheless.