Forums / The hangaround / Remembering the old RTS games

Someone had mentioned utopia in another thread and i got sentimental, Utopia was great in its prime, 30K people playing, kingdoms of 25. coordinates X:Y to find other kingdoms. Text based alot like this game building different buildings that had different uses, training troops, casting spells. but you only had one city and you gained or lost land with farming, fighting or magic. and your building bonuses depended on the % of each building you had. when you attacked you knew right away if you won or lost but it would take time for your armies to return with your newly aquired land lol. the main problem was that the superactive player realized that all you needed was alot of magic, offense, and activity. defense and strategy really had nothing to do with it. so these superkingdoms would war a kingdom their size and leave it with nothing. they would attack people one at a time until that person was useless.

I played another game that was alot of fun even before utopia called Ambar, Kingdoms of 10, coordinates, buildings and armies all like utopia and VU. but here you had to open portals to get to your enemy, and it was random you couldnt choose where it opened to. or how long it would stay open. so again magic, activity and offense wins.

these games were the drunken uncles of VU, but if you compare the overall strategy of VU to these old games, they arent that different. Magic activity and offense always wins. but the map is what make the difference, there is alot of strategy added to this game because of that.

I played in the very early days of Utopia. Was very active around rounds 7 - 12. Was in JRRT Angband, then in HaLL. The world wars were epic.

One of my real life friends was at Utopia right at the start. He was part of Hydra. Yup.... his kingdom won the very first 2 rounds of Utopia.

In my times, names like Toffe, Savannah, Kanga, Glorat, Blacksun, Darksky, Jack Remeau, Flogger, Golem, Eek The Dog, AquaSeaFoam, Twilight, Warkrazz and a few others were legendary. Of course, my comrades, Psychopath and Revenant achieved a lot during their time in Utopia.

Other then the HaLL (the old school ones) and Absalom kingdoms, other legendary kingdoms (in the times I played) included Relentless Armies, Shadowlight, Jesters Troupe, Darwins Dark Legions, the House / JRRT kingdoms, Badguys N Stuff, Morgoths Minions and various pure Swede and Dutch kingdoms that sprung up along the way.

In my times, trading to get into a superkingdom in Utopia was illegal. In my times, the playerbase was so huge, that even a stupid alliance like AA had almost 50 small kingdoms. There were something like 50 islands, and each island had about 50 kingdoms or so of 25 players. There were rounds where my noob kingdom just warred within the same island :D

The game is completely unrecognisable today though.