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This is the game we've been waiting for since Total Annihilation!

There tend to be two types of Real Time Strategy gamers. There are those who prefer what I would call “intimate” strategy, with small maps and comparatively low unit numbers. The Command & Conquer series has traditionally dominated this market. Total Annihilation broke onto the scene 10 years ago, forming a second genre which I call “epic” strategy. The maps were huge, hundreds of units on screen at once was the norm, and RAM sales went through the roof.



Supreme Commander is the greatest epic strategy game in the past decade. I make a distinction between intimate and epic strategy games because comparing them is futile and frankly I’m tired of the arguments! Epic strategy games play very differently to intimate strategy games, they feel different and they provide a distinctly different challenge. While in a game like Company of Heroes you can micromanage (which is not a dirty word) small squads of units through detailed maps like Utah Beach in Normandy, Supreme Commander zooms back to a map the size of Utah!

Therefore I wish to put all comparisons aside and judge Supreme Commander solely on its merit as a game.

Chris Taylor is the man behind the game design. After making Total Annihilation, his main career move was to form Gas Powered Games, most notably responsible for the Dungeon Siege hack n’ slash RPGs. Taylor’s trademark is interface simplification. All of his games feature innovations in control and interface. Dungeon Siege took everything that was annoying about Diablo 2’s controls, and made it easy. Some would say too easy. In an epic strategy game, anything that allows the player to focus on large scale strategy instead of micromanagement is a good thing.



Controlling Supreme Commander is a breeze. There are keyboard shortcuts for just about anything. You can use the shift key to queue up commands and set patrol points which can be dragged around the map. Control can make units move and attack in formation. Double clicking on an attack beacon forces two groups of units to attack simultaneously, adjusting their speed accordingly. Factories can assist each other, splitting the build queue between them so that you only have to design a build queue once. All of these features allow the player to more accurately control their vast armies.



And the armies can be vast indeed. With 8 players on one huge map, literally thousands of units can exist at once. For those with less time to kill (or a sluggish computer) there are small maps for 1v1 battles also. Many people have labelled Supreme Commander as a “rush to win” game, with large quantities of small units being all that is required for victory. I tend to disagree, although control of the map is often given to the player who harasses the enemy’s engineers the most. Sending streams of units into an enemy base will not work against any decent opponent. Tech level 1 defence towers are cheap and very effective against rushing units. I believe that there is no one “best” strategy to use in Supreme Commander, which is an impressive design feat.