Base building is the half of a real-time strategy game that is not fighting: laying down structures that gather a resource, turn it into units, and defend the plot they stand on. The reviewers who watched the form arrive described it in the same terms each time, as Sim City with a war attached. Within four years the idea was so familiar that Computer Gaming World could explain one game by what it left out: “Unlike in Command & Conquer, there is no base-building in Z.”
Fast facts
- The template: Dune II (Westwood, 1992), previewed by Computer Gaming World as “Sim City In A Sandbox”.
- Before it: Herzog Zwei (Technosoft, Mega Drive, 1989) had bases and outposts but read to The Games Machine as “really a multi-direction shoot-’em-up with one or two tactical possibilities”.
- The template restated: Warcraft (1994) and Command & Conquer (1995) were both reviewed as Dune II with the nouns changed.
- Where it went: Total Annihilation (1997) added metal and energy and a 3D terrain; StarCraft (1998) gave its three races different rules for where they may build.
Herzog Zwei
Technosoft’s Herzog Zwei came out in Japan in 1989, and The Games Machine reviewed it as an import in March 1990, at £29.95, as “an unusual product for the 16-bit Sega console: a strategy game.” The description has most of the later pieces: “Both sides have a base to work plus a number of outposts, depending on the type of game selected. As in many games, the aim is simply to capture the enemy flags before he takes yours, but in Herzog Zwei your sprite is a Transformer-style robot that can become a jet aircraft. Other forces can be despatched from your bases to defend from attack.” The reviewer did not think it a strategy game at heart — “it has to be stated that it’s really a multi-direction shoot-’em-up with one or two tactical possibilities” — and gave it 75%. It had at least one attentive audience. “We were also playing Herzog Zwei on the Mega Drive at the time,” Mike Legg of Westwood told Retro Gamer, remembering how Dune II began.
Dune II
Computer Gaming World previewed a beta of Dune II in December 1992 under the headline “Sim City In A Sandbox”. Chuck Moss described the mechanic in detail:
Dune marries the development/financial management dynamic of Sim City to the tactical battle challenge of The Perfect General. Players build their bases by pouring concrete (a lot of concrete gets poured. So much that one begins to feel like an old Soviet Empire techno-commissar), and constructing spice refineries, windtrap power stations, storage silos and various military installations. Development is handled as in Sim City, with building choices made on a separate screen menu, paid for in credits, and placed via mouse.
Each scenario starts the player with “a construction base, a small military force and a starting amount of monetary credits”, and the loop is “a tense grope in the dark to find and harvest the spice, a frantic race to build, and a wild melee of shooting, burning, exploding units”. Moss’s bottom line: “It is strictly a build, fight, and make money game with a Dune hook”.
Amiga Format’s review of the Amiga port in September 1993 set the dependency out as a rule: “To fight battles and mine Melange, you must have troops and vehicles. To build vehicles and train troops, you must build structures. Take one or more concrete slabs, and add one of the following.” Its list of structures included a rocket turret, “Useful for putting near your base as an automatic defence”, and its list of units the vehicle that starts a new base: the “Mobile Construction Vehicle — A scout vehicle transforms itself at will into a fully-functional construction yard.”
Warcraft and Command & Conquer
The two games that fixed the pattern were both reviewed as copies. Chris Lombardi’s Computer Gaming World review of Blizzard’s Warcraft: Orcs & Humans in January 1995 called it “a perfect bit of creative larceny” and spelled out the theft: “Replace the overhead graphics of orcs and humans with Atreides and Harkonnen, substitute Warcraft’s resources (lumber and gold) with Spice, and rename the various buildings that you must construct in a simplified Sim City style, and you have Westwood Studio’s Dune 2.” What Warcraft changed was who does the building. “Starting with the barest makings of a town (usually a town hall and a few farms), you must build up your plot of land into a well-oiled war machine capable of out-producing and out-researching the opponent. From an overhead perspective, you build roads, place buildings, and muster new units, all financed by peasants who must seek out timber from forests and gold from mines.” The peasants are the bottleneck: “to support new peasants, you’ve got to have farms, which must be built by the same peasants you just ordered to the mines.”
Edge gave Westwood’s own Command & Conquer eight out of ten in October 1995 while calling it “an only slightly improved version of a previous Westwood Studio game, the excellent Dune 2, which appeared over three years ago”: “Those familiar with Dune 2 will remember constructing factories and sending troops off into uncharted enemy terrain to fight and capture buildings, while harvester units mined spice for money and returned it to base in order to finance further expansion. Substitute spice for Tiberium and you have Command & Conquer.” Edge also described the sidebar where the building was done: “Buildings appear in the left-hand column and available troops in the right-hand one”.
A name for it
By 1995 the phrase was in reviews. Martin Cirulis’s Computer Gaming World review of X-COM: Terror from the Deep in July 1995 split that game into parts, one of them base-building in the manner of SimCity. By November 1996 it was what readers expected of a real-time war game, and the magazine’s review of the Bitmap Brothers’ Z explained that game by its absence: “Unlike in Command & Conquer, there is no base-building in Z. Instead, you have to capture territories with factories.”
Total Annihilation and StarCraft
By January 1998 Cirulis could open his review of Cavedog’s Total Annihilation with “After playing endless variations on the Command & Conquer theme” and sum up the form in a sentence: “Gather a couple of resources (in this case metal and energy), build a base, and create enough units” to defeat the opponent. What was new was underneath, a true 3D engine in which height and terrain affected every shot, and Cirulis judged that “Not since Interplay’s M.A.X. has a base-building game offered this kind of variety in land, sea, and air units”.
Robert Coffey’s review of StarCraft in July 1998 records the next refinement, making the building rules themselves differ by side: “Terrans split the difference in cost and effectiveness. But, they can build anywhere, unlike the Zerg, who must build on their own excreted slime, or the Protoss, who must build and maintain an energy grid.”
Sources
- The Games Machine issue 28, March 1990, p. 50: Herzog Zwei review (Techno Soft, £29.95, 75%). The game’s 1989 Japanese release is sourced in the real-time strategy and Technosoft entries.
- Retro Gamer issue 48, 2008: the making of Command & Conquer (Mike Legg on playing Herzog Zwei).
- Computer Gaming World issue 101, December 1992, pp. 102–104: Chuck Moss, “Sim City In A Sandbox”, Dune II sneak preview.
- Amiga Format issue 50, September 1993, pp. 56–57: Dune II review (the structures and units lists).
- Computer Gaming World issue 126, January 1995, p. 228: Chris Lombardi, “War Crime In Real Time”, review of Warcraft: Orcs & Humans.
- Edge issue 25, October 1995, pp. 66–67: Command & Conquer testscreen (eight out of ten).
- Computer Gaming World issue 132, July 1995: Martin E. Cirulis, review of X-COM: Terror from the Deep.
- Computer Gaming World issue 148, November 1996: review of Z.
- Computer Gaming World issue 162, January 1998: Martin E. Cirulis, “Annihilating the Competition”, review of Total Annihilation.
- Computer Gaming World issue 168, July 1998: Robert Coffey, “Strategy Supernova”, review of StarCraft.