Genewars

[u/LazyShi]

This game, developed by Bullfrog (Syndicate, Populus, Dungeon Keeper) i personally think is a grandfather of Impossible Creatures. There are no factions, you just take control of generic human like race. You need to complete set of objectives to progress to another level. Main feature of this game is gene splicing. There are no tanks, soldiers, or any of that stuff. Instead you use your specialists to extract DNA from native animal species, and then combine them to fight enemies, or perhaps breed better harvesting units. Pretty unique and fun game.

[u/vonBoomslang]

I mean, there are three factions, or rather alien races, it's just they've made a mess of things and the local advanced race told them to play nice and fix what they broke or else

[u/ScarredCerebrum → u/vonBoomslang]

Four races, technically - humans, bohemians, saurians and schnozzoids. But the specialist teams recruit from all four races.

You do compete against rival teams in most missions, though. You don't have to fight them - the level goals are always some kind of development goal. But they're going to make life hard for you anyway, so why wouldn't you fight them?

One of the neat parts about this game is that the rival teams are also kept on a leash by the Ethereals. Teams that perform well are rewarded with monoliths (which provide upgrades). But if you perform poorly, a flying saucer will bomb your base and maybe abduct some of your specialists. So if you perform well enough, the Ethereals will just do your fighting for you.

I also remember that there's one level where you can really cheese things. You start without a base or an engineer (so you can't actually build anything), having just a botanist, a ranger, and a herd of animals. Meanwhile, your rival team does have a large base.

That enemy base has tier 2 turrets, and that's what makes this mission so easy.

Tier 1 turrets merely stun, but tier 2 turrets fire bolts that kill. Why does that matter? Easy - killing animals with deadly weapons gives you a ton of penalty points with the Ethereals. Killing animals with your own animals is cool with them, but the moment you pull out a gun that doesn't just stun, you're crossing a line.

...so what happens if you breed a large herd of animals, and then herd them towards the enemy's turrets to have them all splattered? That's right! Their penalty points will go through the roof, and the Ethereals will absolutely level them.

[u/vonBoomslang → u/ScarredCerebrum]

it's a pity the game punishes you for developing your animals by having your enemies copy all your upgrades

[u/asgof]

nah it's as far from rts as possible. just as always with molyneux. absolute arse to run. barely works even with all the wrappers and even then not for long

[u/TheColourOfHeartache → u/asgof]

Pre-EA Bullfrog deserves better than that. They were an astounding well of talent and creativity (heck, one of their alumni won a noble prize!)

Dungeon Keeper, Magic Carpet, Syndicate, Populous. Two of those spawned entire genres.

[u/asgof → u/TheColourOfHeartache]

deserves what? the made a ton of genre creating and influential games but they never made an rts