{"title":"Action RTS","description":"\u003cp\u003eAction RTS is real-time strategy that puts you on the battlefield rather than above it. A traditional RTS asks you to gather, build and produce, then to point an army at the enemy and trust the unit AI to fight it out; an action RTS keeps that command layer but hands you direct, moment-to-moment control of a hero or a handful of powerful units whose abilities, positioning and timing decide the fight. The lineage runs back to Herzog Zwei, Technosoft's 1989 Genesis game in which you personally flew the transforming mech that carried your units into position, and to Battlezone in 1998, which put the commander in the cockpit of a hover tank. The form as most players know it arrived with Warcraft III in 2002: Blizzard added leveling heroes with inventories and spells to a conventional base-building game, and fights turned on whether the right hero was standing in the right place when the ability came off cooldown. Phenomic's SpellForce a year later pushed the same idea further toward the RPG, and Relic's Dawn of War II in 2009 pared the base away almost entirely, leaving a squad of upgradable commanders to carry the campaign.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe hallmarks are consistent across the form. There is a unit you care about more than the rest: a hero or commander who levels, carries equipment and has a bar of abilities you trigger by hand, and who is expensive or impossible to replace, so keeping that unit alive becomes a strategic goal in itself. Battles are won by execution as much as by numbers - the stun landed before the enemy caster finishes, the retreat called a second early, the flank that hits the artillery instead of the front line. The macro layer is usually still there, but thinned, so that resource and production decisions set up fights without smothering them. Camera and pacing follow suit: the view sits closer to the ground, unit counts stay low enough that you can read every model, and armies rarely dissolve into an anonymous blob. What separates a good action RTS from a merely competent one is whether the two layers talk to each other. Handled well, the hero's abilities change what your army can attempt and the army changes what the hero can survive; handled poorly, it is an RTS with one overpowered unit and a skill bar, or an action game with a base bolted on that nobody wants to manage.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis collection gathers the titles in our catalog that carry the Action RTS tag. It sits between our RTS and Action collections: the games here keep the command of forces that defines the RTS collection, but the execution of individual actions matters in a way a traditional RTS leaves to the unit AI, and most of them appear in both. It is also a close neighbor of our Real Time Tactics collection, which likewise strips the economy down to the fight itself; the difference is that Real Time Tactics is about maneuvering a fixed force, while an action RTS usually retains production and centers on a hero whose personal power is the point. All of them fall within our broader Strategy collection. Grimlore Games' SpellForce 3: Fallen God is a representative case, combining RTS and RPG so that heroes with skill trees and abilities fight alongside the army they lead, and every unit's strengths have to be used well to win. If you want a strategy game where you are in the fight rather than watching it from above, start here.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"spellforce-3-fallen-god-windows-pc-steam-digital-download","title":"SpellForce 3: Fallen God","description":"\u003cp class=\"lead\"\u003eSpellForce 3: Fallen God hands you the trolls, a race SpellForce 3 had only ever shown you across the battlefield. As Akrog, young chieftain of the Moonkin, you lead a nomadic troll tribe that is being hunted for its tusks and hollowed out by disease. When an enigmatic Elven stranger offers a way out, the price is nothing less than resurrecting a fallen god. Developed by Grimlore Games and published by THQ Nordic, this standalone expansion delivers a complete campaign of around 20 hours that needs no prior knowledge of SpellForce 3 or SpellForce 3: Soul Harvest.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003ch2\u003eThe Moonkin's Last March\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eMost fantasy strategy games put you in command of a rising power. Fallen God does the opposite. The Moonkin are dwindling, driven from their home and stalked by poachers who see nothing in a troll but the value of its tusks. Every decision Akrog makes carries the weight of a tribe that cannot afford another loss, and the journey across Urgath, a continent of Eo the series had never shown before, is as much about holding your people together as it is about winning battles.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eGrimlore Games gives the trolls a voice and a culture rather than treating them as fodder, and the result is one of the more affecting stories in the SpellForce saga. The Elven stranger's offer of salvation raises as many questions as it answers, and the campaign is built to reward players who pay attention to who is asking for what, and why.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003ch2\u003eWhere Real-Time Strategy Meets Role-Playing\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe SpellForce formula pairs two genres that rarely share a screen, and Fallen God refines both halves. Missions shift naturally between intimate hero-led exploration and full-scale warfare.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cdl\u003e\n\u003cdt\u003eSector-based RTS warfare\u003c\/dt\u003e\n\u003cdd\u003eClaim sectors, build camps, gather resources and raise a troll army in an improved sector-based system. Each unit type has distinct strengths, and making the best use of them against the right enemies is what turns a desperate skirmish into a decisive victory.\u003c\/dd\u003e\n\u003cdt\u003eHero-driven RPG exploration\u003c\/dt\u003e\n\u003cdd\u003eBetween and during battles, your heroes explore Urgath on foot, talking to its inhabitants, uncovering its mysteries and using unique interactions with the world to open paths that an army alone could never find.\u003c\/dd\u003e\n\u003cdt\u003eCrafting from the fallen\u003c\/dt\u003e\n\u003cdd\u003eThe trolls have no forges of their own, so they take what they need. Salvage legendary weapons and armor from other races and rework them into gear that gives your tribe the edge in the fights ahead.\u003c\/dd\u003e\n\u003c\/dl\u003e\n\n\u003ch2\u003eHeroes Shaped by Your Choices\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eFallen God introduces all-new abilities and skill trees, and the freedom to combine them is where the RPG side of the game truly opens up. Build Akrog and his companions to suit the way you like to fight, whether that means a frontline bruiser who anchors the army or a support caster who keeps the tribe standing through a long engagement.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe character-shaping mechanic goes further than stats. The decisions you make throughout the campaign shape who Akrog becomes and lead to multiple endings, which gives a 20-hour story a genuine reason for a second playthrough. Few RTS campaigns offer that kind of replay value, and it is one of the clearest advances over Soul Harvest.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003ch2\u003eFour Factions, Ranked Play and Modding\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eBeyond the campaign, Fallen God carries the full SpellForce 3 multiplayer suite. The Trolls join Humans, Elves and Orcs as a fourth RTS faction with brand-new mechanics, and each faction fields two unique heroes that complement different play styles.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eCompete for glory in Ranked Play, where the four-faction roster and the asymmetry between hero-focused and army-focused strategies keep matches varied and demanding.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eTeam up online in co-op, sharing the sector map with a friend against AI opponents or facing other players together in competitive PvP.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eCreate your own maps with the included level editor and share them through Steam Workshop. The tools for building Custom Campaigns arrived alongside Fallen God, so the community's scenarios extend the game well past its own story.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003c\/ul\u003e\n\n\u003ch2\u003eAnswer the Stranger's Call\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eUrgath is waiting, the Moonkin are running out of time, and a god lies buried somewhere in the wilds. Take up Akrog's mantle in SpellForce 3: Fallen God and find out what your tribe is willing to do to survive.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"THQ Nordic","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":33393174020182,"sku":"PC_4977988796502_DL_GL","price":9.79,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0875\/3268\/files\/card-spellforce-3-fallen-god-pc-steam-game.jpg?v=1789256464"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.pjsgames.com\/collections\/action-rts.oembed","provider":"PJ's Games","version":"1.0","type":"link"}